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Virginia Ham Glace with Spinach
Procure a very small raw Virginia ham, soak in cold water for six hours, then boil in plenty of boiling water for three hours. Remove, tear off skin and neatly trim all the black adherings and lay in a roasting tin; dredge two ounces granulated sugar over, pour three tablespoons good sherry in the pan, then set in the oven to glaze for twenty-five minutes, frequently basting meanwhile. Dress on a hot dish, and arrange the same amount of spinach around the ham. Pour one and a half gills demi-glace in the roasting pan, boil for five minutes, pour the sauce around the dish, adjust a curled paper at the end bone and serve.
A hotel-kitchen treatment of a country ham: long soak, long boil, brief sugar-and-sherry glaze, and a classic brown sauce poured around. Most of what needs translating is the ham itself, which is not the pink supermarket ham of today.
- What "raw Virginia ham" meansThis is a dry salt-cured, usually smoked and often aged country ham, sold uncooked and hard as a board. It is not a wet-cured city ham, and it is very salty; the six-hour soak and the long boil serve chiefly to draw salt out. A "very small" one might run around 10 lb bone-in.
- Doneness beats the clockThree hours of simmering suits a small ham, but go by internal temperature at the thickest point away from the bone rather than by time. Keep the water at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, which tightens the meat and shreds the outer layer.
- Glazing ovenNo temperature is given. A hot oven, around 400-425F, is what gets a lacquer in twenty-five minutes; lower and the sugar simply melts and runs. Score the fat in diamonds before dredging so the glaze has something to hold.
- Sugar quantityTwo ounces of granulated sugar is a scant third of a cup by volume. Pat it onto damp fat so it sticks, and baste every five minutes or so; the pan syrup is the whole glaze.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of demi-glace is about three-quarters of a cup. Boiled five minutes in the roasting pan with the sherry and sugar residue, it will reduce noticeably.
- Demi-glaceClassically, espagnole sauce combined with brown stock and reduced by half. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace is sold now; failing that, a well-reduced brown stock will do, but do not salt it at all, since the pan is already carrying ham salt.
- "The same amount of spinach"The text asks for the same amount as the ham; whether that was meant by weight is unclear, but the effect wanted is a full ring. Fresh spinach, wilted, squeezed hard and finished with butter, loses most of its bulk, so buy well in excess of the volume you want around the ham.
- The curled paperA paper frill slipped over the exposed shank bone, standard carving-table dress in period hotel service. Purely decorative and easily skipped.
- YieldA ham this size serves 15 to 20 as a course, and the leftovers are the real point. Carve in thin slices at a shallow angle across the grain.
Virginia ham is the American branch of the old European dry-cure tradition: hogs raised on mast and corn, hams packed in salt, hung to smoke and then aged for months, with Smithfield in Isle of Wight County giving its name to the most tightly defined version. By the time this book was compiled, a whole glazed Virginia ham with spinach is often said to have been part of grand-hotel and Delmonico-style service in New York, finished with French demi-glace and a paper frill. The pairing with spinach is practical as much as decorative: a plain, faintly bitter green is one of the few things that stands up to meat this salty and this sweet at once.