To Boil Ham
Simmer slowly until tender, let cool in the liquor; after removing the rind, stick in a few cloves, cover with a paste of eggs and bread crumbs and brown in the oven.
A three-line instruction that assumes you already know how to handle a whole cured ham. The gaps worth filling are soaking, timing, temperature and what the "paste" actually is.
- What kind of ham this isIn the period this book belongs to, a ham was a bone-in leg, dry-salt or brine cured and often smoked, sold hard and raw rather than cooked. Modern supermarket ham is wet-cured and already fully cooked, so it needs only reheating; this method is written for a genuinely raw cured ham of the country or dry-cured type.
- Soak firstThe book omits it, presumably taking it for granted. A heavily salted country ham wants 12 to 24 hours in cold water, changed two or three times, before it goes into the pot, or the finished meat will be inedibly salty.
- Simmer, not boilThe hinge of the recipe is the word slowly. Water at a bare shiver, around 180-185F, keeps the muscle fibres from tightening; a rolling boil gives you dry, stringy ham no matter how long you cook it.
- TimingReckon roughly 20 to 25 minutes per pound for a raw cured ham, so four to five hours for a 12 lb leg. Tender means a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance and the small bone at the hock end twists free; an instant-read thermometer should show 145-150F.
- Cooling in the liquorThis is not idleness. As the ham cools in its own stock it reabsorbs liquid and seasoning, and the meat firms enough to skin and carve cleanly. Allow several hours; overnight in a cold place is better still, provided the pot chills reasonably quickly.
- The pasteThe text says a paste of eggs and bread crumbs, which may mean the two worked together; it is usually read as beaten egg brushed over the fat with a thick coat of fine dry breadcrumbs pressed on. Some period recipes add brown sugar or mustard to the crumbs. It sets into a crust rather than the sticky sugar glaze most people expect from a modern baked ham.
- Oven for browningThe original gives no heat because the ham is already cooked and only the coating needs colour. A hot oven, 400-425F, for 15 to 20 minutes browns the crumbs before the meat beneath dries out.
- YieldA bone-in ham gives roughly two to three servings per pound, so a 12 lb leg feeds a crowd and then supplies a week of cold cuts, which is precisely how it was used.
Boiling a ham and then finishing it briefly in the oven was the standard treatment in Anglo-American households for as long as hams were cured whole at home or bought whole from a grocer. The long simmer draws out excess salt from the cure and softens meat that has spent weeks or months in salt and smoke; the oven stage exists only to give the pale, sodden exterior a presentable crust for the table. The egg-and-crumb coating belongs to the same family of techniques as raspings sprinkled over a cold ham. The cloves are both flavour and decoration. The terseness of the entry is itself informative: a book of this vintage could assume that soaking, skinning and carving a whole ham were common knowledge, and spend its words only on the finish.