Put it into a large pan with a bouquet garni, a large onion stuck with five cloves, 2 medium carrots sliced, and a level teaspoon of saltpetre (to give it an extra rosy colour). Cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer very gently for two hours.

Let it cool in the cooking liquid for one hour.

Remove it onto a large dish, skin and pat it into the best shape you can manage. Push down the meat at the point of the cone to expose a small piece of bone—you should aim at a large pear shape—and trim off any uneven bits.

Toast plenty of white breadcrumbs on a baking tray in the oven, and whilst they are still warm roll the jambonneau firmly over them until it is completely covered.

Leave overnight, and eat within two days—this is not a keeping ham.

Épaule Roulée (Rolled Shoulder Ham)

Buy a whole hand of pork and bone it. Use bits of meat from the fleshier part to pad out the thinner part and roll the joint up, after sprinkling it with pepper and spices. Tie firmly and leave in brine twelve days.

Hang up to dry in a cool, airy place (60°F.), away from direct sunlight or humidity. It will be ready after four days.

(This ham can be smoked after drying.)

This is an especially good ham for Jambon de Reims en Croûte.

Saumure Italienne

Alcohol makes an excellent preservative, so it is not surprising to find it used for curing pork, along with the processes of salting, drying and smoking. In Scotland, beer is used to make a rich sweet brine; and at the other end of Europe, the Italians use their plentiful dry white wine, particularly in the Northern plain around Modena. There the hams are cut squat and thick, and spend a month to five weeks in a brine of this type:

2 ½ pints of soft water, or rain water

2 oz. saltpetre

2 lb. white sea salt

1 oz. bicarbonate of soda

2½ pints dry white wine

1 oz. whole spices

Put the first four ingredients into a large pan and bring to the boil, giving an occasional stir As it bubbles, add the wine and spices, and take off the heat immediately, so that the brine does not boil again, once the wine has been added. Leave it to get quite cold, then strain through a muslin, or piece of white sheeting, into the scrupulously clean crock.

A rolled shoulder of pork, prepared in the same way as for the previous recipe, is a good joint to cure in this brine. Give it a fortnight (10–12 days, if the weather is hot) in the brine, then hang from a hook in a cool, airy place, where the temperature is between 50° and 60°F., for four to six days. Cook in the usual way—see Jambon de Paris, and serve with a white wine sauce.

A leg of pork would give you a Modena type ham; four weeks in brine, four days to dry, then store in olive (or pure vegetable) oil—not unlike a Mediterranean confit de porc, substituting the local form of fat for lard.

(Both shoulder and leg can alternatively be smoked, rather than preserved in oil, for eating raw. Again I would repeat my warning not to rely on the safety of home smoking unless you can do it under the care of an expert.)

Saumure Écossaise

2 quarts of good strong beer

1 lb. sea salt

½ lb. rock salt (gros sel), or block salt

A small piece of salprunella, crushed, or 1 level teaspoon saltpetre

½ lb. soft, dark brown sugar

Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Teaspoon freshly ground allspice

Bring all these ingredients to the boil in a large pan and let them cool overnight. Strain carefully.

Rub the ham with 2 oz. dark brown sugar and 1 oz. saltpetre, and leave it overnight.

Next day rub the ham over again with the 2 oz. sugar and 1 oz. saltpetre, put it into a deep dish and pour the beer brine over it. Leave to cure for a month, but every day turn the ham over and rub the brine well in, particularly down the bone.

(This farmhouse cure was intended for hams which would be spending some time up the big kitchen chimney being smoked—but without this, you will get a delicious result.)

SMOKED HAM

(Jambon Fumé)

Smoking involves three major problems—space, advanced standards of hygiene, and expertise. Smoking, that is to say, for preservation over a fair period of time. A smokey flavour can be induced by small apparatus of the Abu Smoking Box type (available at Habitat Ltd, 77 Fulham Rd, London S.W.3); but this is only suitable for small objects like sausages, in any case.

From an English point of view, the main purpose of smoking hams would be to produce a jambon cru of the Bayonne type, which is either not widely available in this country, or very expensive. The best solution for most people would be to make arrangements with the nearest bacon factory for smoking, and then get down to the actual pickling process at home.

If, however, you want to experiment with smoking, order a copy of Bulletin 127 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Home Curing of Bacon and Hams, from your local public library. It is out of print, so you will not be able to buy it. See also Sausage and Small Goods Production, by Frank Gerrard. Less easily obtainable are French handbooks on charcuterie, which deal more fully with smoking on the farmhouse scale, as this is still widely carried on in country districts. The most useful, I find, is La Charcuterie à la Campagne, by Henriette Babet-Charton, published by La Maison Rustique, 26 rue Jacob, Paris VI^e.

She suggests three ways of smoking, firstly by hanging the pieces above the mouth of the bread oven, secondly by suspending them from an iron bar placed high up across a wide farmhouse chimney, and thirdly by building a special smoke box which can be fixed against the chimney breast when required: the illustrations give an idea of the last two methods.

Many French houses still have a bread oven in the large fireplace, like English farms. The idea is to hang the joints and sausages, once cured, above the opening so that the smoke from the fire inside the oven billows up and around them in a gentle steady waft. This system ensures that the temperature of the smoke never rises above 90°F., at which point the fat begins to melt, and the hams are spoilt. By burning green branches you ensure plenty of smoke—for extra flavour burn juniper, pine, sage, bay, and heather. In the past Breton hams were smoked in fires of seaweed. Beat the fire down to keep it smouldering, not burning in flames. The first day, smoke the hams for half an hour, then take them down and rub them whilst they are still warm with pepper, spices, thyme, crushed bay leaves, which will cling to the softened fat. Leave them to cool and dry for 48 hours. Then smoke them for one hour. Leave them again for 48 hours, and smoke again for one hour. This should be enough for a light flavour.

If you have a wide old-fashioned chimney, which you are not using to cook in as many French farmers’ wives do, you can either stretch wire between two hooks high up, or else make use of a permanently fixed iron bar. The fire will be more subject to draughts caused by household comings and goings, and will therefore need more attention. The best plan is to confine the smoking to a couple of hours every day, over a longish period, when you can be sure of attending to the fire without too many interruptions. In the bacon factory, a series of smoking rooms are supplied from a furnace room for so long each day, and the whole business is carefully controlled; but don’t be discouraged, after all factory curing is a newcomer against the long history of smoked meat. Allow at least three weeks for fireplace smoking.