Stuffed Ham

History

Stuffed Ham is recipe No. 115 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking" (San Francisco, 1881). Abby Fisher boils the ham first and skins it while hot, adding a teacup of vinegar to the water. The stuffing is veal and cracker: "take half pound of cooked veal, one tea-cup of powdered cracker; chop veal fine, mix both together, salt and pepper to taste." She then cuts gashes about an inch apart across the ham, packs each one with the mixture, and bakes it — pouring a pint of sherry wine over the ham and basting with it until brown, grating a whole nutmeg over the surface as it cooks.

Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She could neither read nor write and dictated the book from "an experience of upwards of thirty-five years," and had won a diploma at the 1879 Sacramento State Fair and two medals at the 1880 San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair. The book is among the earliest cookbooks by an African American author and the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States, after Malinda Russell's "Domestic Cook Book" (1866).

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular preparation.

Ingredients

• ham
• 1 teacup vinegar
• 0.5 pound veal
• 1 teacup cracker crumbs
• salt
• pepper
• 1 pint sherry wine
• 1 nutmeg
• cracker powder

Instructions

1. Boil the ham, then remove the skin while it is hot.
2. Add one teacup of vinegar to the boiling water.
3. Chop the half pound of cooked veal fine and mix it together with one teacup of powdered cracker.
4. Season the veal and cracker mixture with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Make gashes about one inch apart in the surface of the ham.
6. Stuff each gash with the veal and cracker mixture.
7. Place the ham in the oven to bake.
8. Pour one pint of sherry wine over the ham.
9. Grate one nutmeg over the ham and sprinkle cracker powder over the surface.
10. Baste the ham regularly while baking until it is brown.