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Noix of Ham, Port Wine Sauce
Soak a three-pound piece fresh ham from the round for three hours, remove, wipe well and neatly trim it all around. Place it in a saucepan with a sliced onion, a sprig thyme, a sprig marjoram, one bay leaf, two cloves and two tablespoons melted butter, brown on the fire for fifteen minutes, turn the ham and stir the vegetables once in a while. Moisten with a pint of broth, two gills demi-glace and two gills tomato sauce, season with a half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan, let boil for ten minutes, then set in the oven for two hours, remove, dress the ham on large dish, pour port wine sauce over and serve.
N. B. Pour entire contents of the pan into the demi-glace.
A straightforward French braise of fresh pork leg, written for a professional kitchen that already had stock, demi-glace and tomato sauce standing by. Two things need translating: the cut, and the sauce base.
- What a noix isNoix is French butchery for the cushion or topside muscle of the hind leg — the rounded inner section, sold today as a fresh ham roast or pork leg roast. Ask for a boneless piece from the round rather than the shank end.
- Fresh ham is not ham"Fresh ham" here means uncured, unsmoked pork leg. Using a cured or smoked ham will make the finished dish aggressively salty once it has reduced with demi-glace.
- The three-hour soakPresumably cold water, though the recipe does not say; a soak of this kind was ordinarily meant to draw out blood and firm the surface before trimming. It is optional with modern chilled pork; if you skip it, still trim the roast square so it browns evenly.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of demi-glace is one cup, and two gills of tomato sauce is another cup, against a pint of broth.
- Demi-glaceEspagnole and brown stock reduced down together — a standing staple of a restaurant kitchen of this period, a specialty purchase now. Good jarred demi-glace works; a strongly reduced homemade brown stock is closer in spirit than any bouillon cube.
- Oven temperatureNone is given; the book leaves it to the cook. A moderate 325F, covered, works — check at 90 minutes; two hours is right for a full three-pound piece, but a thinner one will get there sooner.
- DonenessThis is a braise, not a roast. Pull it when a skewer slides in with no resistance, around 185F internal, which is well past the 145F safe minimum and is where the leg muscle finally turns sliceable rather than tight.
- The N.B.The note is the real instruction: the entire braising liquid goes into your demi-glace, which then becomes the base for the port wine sauce. Straining and degreasing first is a modern refinement, not in the text.
- Port wine sauceFilippini expects you to turn to a separate sauce entry. In practice: reduce port hard, add the strained braising liquid and demi-glace, reduce again to coating consistency, and finish with butter.
- YieldThree pounds of boneless leg serves six generously, eight in a longer menu.
The International Cook Book is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, who spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the writing shows it — the recipe assumes a brigade with demi-glace, tomato sauce and broth already in the pots, and it names the cut in French. Noix literally means "nut," the French butcher's word for the rounded cushion muscle of the hind leg, a term still used in France for veal and pork alike. Pairing that leg with port is a nineteenth-century restaurant convention rather than a peasant one: fortified wine reduced into a brown sauce was the standard way of dressing a plain roast or braise for a dining room.