Some Notes on Food

A splendid ham, from Trigg County, Kentucky, served to remind me the other evening that the good old days are still, in some respects, agreeably with us. The ham, I was informed, came from Tuggle’s Grocery Store in the town of Cadiz, and although most such hams are aged for two years after curing, this one had a mere eighteen months behind it. No matter. It was wonderful: delicate and moist in texture, a full smoky flavor, and wine-dark in color, with a yellowish fat quite unlike the tasteless lardlike fat of ham from the big packinghouses.

From other information supplied by my host, I gathered that Kentuckians provide no fancy diet for their pigs, which are raised on corn and forage. The hams are hickory smoked, and the cooking, after a day or two of soaking them in several waters, is no more complicated than simmering between fifteen and twenty minutes to the pound, according to age and hardness, until the small bones can be pulled out readily. The final instructions were simple enough:

“When cool, trim off the top skin, and enough fat to leave about ½ inch, level fat jacket. Cut (not deeply enough to enter meat) with a sharp knife all over fat, marking it off into squares. Insert a whole clove in each square, spread a cup of soft brown sugar over the whole surface. Put under the broiler (not pre-heated) and allow to bubble until sugar melts and glazes the whole surface.”

It seems obvious that the excellence of the result, from so commonplace a recipe, lies in the quality of the ham itself: an honest product, developed by faithful adherence to proper curing and aging, without substitutes and shortcuts. Similar rewards can be found in bacon from country sources, and there are still to be had varieties that seem just as satisfying as the best from Ireland or Denmark.

While the U.S. mails continue at their languid pace — eighteen days for delivery from Tennessee to New Jersey in one recent case — it is best to buy bacon unsliced and thereby less susceptible to mold. The removal of mold, according to the Kentuckians, is best done by scrubbing with a stiff brush and mild soapsuds, and mold need not be a problem if postage for rapid handling is added. I incline to doubt whether the small suppliers of country hams and bacon are equipped for any sizable volume of mail orders, but I am bound to report that the most interesting bacon I have tasted in many years came from William Baggett’s Roadside Market, in Humboldt, Tennessee. In slices of about a quarter inch or slightly thicker, the Baggett bacon retains real substance, even when it is completely crisped.

Ham and bacon of old-fashioned quality seem to belong to the South, but there survive in Massachusetts three examples of old-style crackers that ought to be bracketed with them in these notes: G. H. Bent’s Water Biscuits, which, split and toasted, are the incomparable noninterfering accompaniment for a fine cheese; the Westminster Thin Saltines, made by Dawley & Shepard in the town of Westminster (established 1828); and Bradt Saltines, from the Bradt Bakery (established 1833) in Lowell. The longevity of these small, independent cracker companies is worth remarking, and Josiah Bent is credited with marketing the first water biscuit in 1801, although the present company, located in Milton, dates itself back to only 1892. The Bradt and Westminster saltines are extraordinarily good, but, I fear, of only local repute, while Bent’s are still to be found in first-class restaurants anywhere in this country.