Good Things in England - A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes Suited to Modern Tastes. Florence White
for cooking purposes: any wooden box with a lid can be used and newspapers used for stuffing instead of hay.
To Cook a Ham
A ‘luxury’ recipe
This was found written on a loose piece of paper in an old book, and its date and origin are unknown beyond the fact that it is English.
INGREDIENTS: Water; sherry or Marsala 1 pint; beer 1 pint; brown sugar a large cupful; real black treacle 1 lb. [not golden syrup!] any cut up vegetables, onions, carrots, cabbage, etc.
TIME: 4 days to soak in water; about 4 or 5 hours to cook.
METHOD
1.Soak the ham 4 days in water, which must be changed every day.
2.Scrape as usual.
3.Put in pot with fresh cold water, the sherry or Marsala, beer, sugar and treacle.
4.The liquor must cover the ham.
5.A few cut-up vegetables improve the flavour; bring to boiling point, and simmer till done.
Ham Loaf
INGREDIENTS: Cooked ham about 1 lb. (1/4 fat); bread 2 oz; milk 1 gill; finely chopped parsley 1 teaspoonful; pepper, a little ground mace; egg 1.
METHOD
1.Put ham through the mincer.
2.Boil up the milk and pour it over the bread to soak it.
3.Mix all up well together.
4.Season with pepper.
5.Mix with one well-beaten egg.
6.Grease a plain mould or basin.
7.Press the mixture firmly down and bake in a moderate oven till nicely browned.
8.Do not turn out until cold. If there should be any difficulty in turning it out loosen it by slipping the blade of a knife round it, and then stand it for a few minutes in hot water, when it should turn out quite easily.
To Salt Hams
(An Old Devon Recipe)
The Hon. Mrs. H. Hannen, of Boughton Monchelsea, Kent, writes (in 1931)
‘I enclose a recipe for curing hams that may be useful. It is out of an old book bought amongst a lot at a sale about 30 years ago. In those days we used to keep our own pigs and thought we would try to cure our hams by it. We found it so good that since then we have never used any other. It is very full-flavoured and somewhat like a Spanish ham we think. The book is dated 1764.’
RECIPE
INGREDIENTS: Water 3 or 4 gallons; bay salt 4 lb; white salt 8 lb.; saltpetre 1/4 lb.; prunella salt 2 oz.; brown sugar 8 lb.
TIME: to pickle 4 or 5 weeks.
METHOD
1.Boil all the ingredients together for 15 minutes.
2.Skim well.
3.When it is cold pour it from the bottom into the vessel you keep it in.
4.Let the hams lie in this pickle four or five weeks.
5.Dry them in a stove or the chimney of a wood fire.
Sweet Pickle for Hams
Mrs. Martin, Frome, Somersetshire, 1850
INGREDIENTS: Juniper berries 1 oz.; allspice 2 oz.; long pepper 1 oz.; black peppercorns 1 oz.; treacle 1/2 lb.; old strong beer 1 pint.
METHOD
1.Bruise all the berries.
2.Boil in 1/2 pint of the beer with the spices.
3.Warm the treacle till it liquifies.
4.Mix it with the unboiled beer, and with the boiled beer strained off the spices.
5.Salt the ham slightly for 2 weeks.
6.Pour the pickle over it and keep in it 4 or 5 weeks, turning it over and over and basting it well each day.
7.Dry and smoke as usual.
Ham Pickle
An Oxfordshire Recipe, 1929
The following recipe for pickling hams was kindly given in 1929 by Mr. George Hawkins, at that time owner and landlord of the Langston Arms, Kingham, Oxfordshire. Mrs. Hawkins says, however, that, although Mr. Hawkins always attends to the pickling himself most carefully, much of the excellence of their hams depends on the feeding, housing and care he gives to his pigs. When he has run short of hams and has had to buy from other people, the hams cured in exactly the same manner have not always been so good.
INGREDIENTS: Old beer 1 quart; peppercorns 2 oz.; saltpetre 2 oz.; black pepper 2 oz.; bay salt 2 oz.; juniper berries 2 oz.; common brown sugar 4 lb.; salt 1 lb. This is sufficient for 2 large or 3 small hams.
TIME: Salt lightly for a fortnight, then put in pickle for a month or 5 weeks.
METHOD
1.Lightly salt the hams for 2 weeks, rubbing in the salt.
2.Boil the ingredients for the pickle all together for 15 minutes.
3.Let it get cold.
4.Pour it over the hams.
5.Dry and smoke in stove or chimney of wood fire.
To Cure Hams
Mrs. Anger’s Receipt, Burnham-on-Crouch
INGREDIENTS: Salt 1 lb.; coarse sugar 1 lb.; bay salt 1/4 lb.; salt prunella 1 oz.; saltpetre 1 teaspoonful; vinegar 1/2 pint.
TIME: let them lie in the pickle a month, if large five weeks.
N.B.— See Whip Sillabubs, page 258.
To Pickle Hams
Colonel Wilson’s ‘excellent’ receipt: Tendring Hall, Suffolk, 1857. Suffolk sweet-cured hams are famous.
INGREDIENTS: A leg of pork; salt of prunella 1 oz.; saltpetre 1 1/2 oz.; coarse salt 1 lb.; bay salt 4 oz.; coarse sugar 1 1/2 lb.; treacle 1/2 lb.
TIME: to remain in pickle one month; then smoke for three weeks.
METHOD
1.Rub the ham hard for an hour with the above ingredients well mixed.
2.Let the ham remain in the pickle one month.
3.Rub it as directed three times a week during the month.
4.Then smoke it for 3 weeks.
Hamburg Pickle for Beef, etc.
‘This,’ says Miss Anstey, ‘is probably a German receipt, as one of my grand-uncles married a wife from Hamburg.’
INGREDIENTS: Water 6 quarts; common salt 9 lb.; coarse sugar 3/4 lb.; saltpetre 6 oz.
TIME: The beef or tongues must be kept in this liquor 8 or 9 days.
METHOD
1.Boil