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Ham Baked in Cider
Wash and soak over night a small, lean ham; next morning wipe dry and sprinkle over the fleshy side one tablespoonful of chopped onion, one teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, a quarter teaspoonful of cloves; make a paste of flour and water, roll it out thin, cover it over the fleshy side of the ham, put the ham, skin down, in a baking pan, pour over it three pints of cider, to which you have added one-half teaspoon of pepper, cover with another pan and bake in a moderate oven two hours, basting every fifteen minutes; at the end of that time remove the upper pan and allow the ham to cook two hours longer. When ready to dish, remove the paste, then the skin, trim the bone neatly, brush the skin side with beaten egg, dust it with bread crumbs and chopped parsley, and put it in a quick oven to brown; skim off the fat from the cider, boil it down until reduced half, which you may turn into the sauce boat. When the ham is browned, take from the oven, garnish the bone with a paper frill and serve in a bed of water cress. Little red-skinned apples may be placed here and there on the cress.
A whole bone-in ham cooked half-covered in cider, finished with a browned crumb crust. The method still works, but almost every ham sold today is cured differently from the one this recipe assumes.
- What kind of hamThe overnight soak tells you this is a salt-cured ham, firm and salty enough to need drawing before cooking. A modern wet-cured supermarket ham is already mild and fully cooked, so soaking accomplishes nothing and long cooking only dries it. If you use a genuine dry-cured country ham, the soak is not optional.
- The ciderIn American books of this period "cider" usually means sweet, unfermented apple cider rather than the alcoholic drink, though the recipe does not say which. Three pints is 6 cups; unfiltered fresh cider gives the best body when reduced.
- The flour pasteThis is huff paste, a sacrificial crust that traps steam and holds the spices against the meat. It is discarded, not eaten, so make it stiff and thick enough to survive four hours in the pan rather than tender.
- Oven heatA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere around 350F; for a four-hour bake on a large ham, 325F is safer against scorching once the upper pan comes off. A quick oven is roughly 425 to 450F, and the final browning wants only a short time -- watch it rather than time it.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockThe recipe gives no weight, only "a small, lean ham," so four hours is a starting point rather than a rule. Go by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone: 145F for a raw dry-cured ham, or simply heated through for one sold cooked. Overshooting turns a lean ham stringy.
- The covered pan"Cover with another pan" means inverting a second roasting pan over the first as a lid. A sheet of heavy foil crimped to the rim does the same job, and the point is the same either way: steam for the first half, open browning for the second.
- The sauceSkim the pan cider well before reducing it by half, or the sauce will be greasy. Country-ham drippings are salty, so taste before adding anything and be ready to soften it with a spoonful of cider or a knob of butter.
- Yield and garnishThe recipe specifies only a small ham, so judge servings by the weight you actually buy. The paper frill is a decorative cuff for the exposed bone; the little red apples on watercress are raw, and are there for the table rather than the plate.
Cooking pork in apple cider is an old habit of orchard country on both sides of the Atlantic, and the pairing survives in everything from Normandy pork dishes to Virginia and Pennsylvania ham. The flour-and-water jacket here is a much older technique than the book itself: "huff paste" or "huff crust" was used for centuries to shield roasts and hams from direct heat before ovens could be regulated, and it lingered in printed recipes long after thermostats made it unnecessary. What marks this version is the finish rather than the method: the egg wash, crumb and parsley coating, the reduced cider served separately in a sauce boat, the paper frill on the bone and the bed of watercress all belong to a style of dressing a large joint for a sideboard, where a ham was expected to look composed.