This is a great recipe for all those odds and ends of ham that are left after slicing. It’s also a good way of using the hock or shank of a pig’s leg.

The recipe is an updated version of the one in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management/Chapter XXI:

“Ingredients. To 2 lb. of lean ham allow ½ a lb. of fat, ¼ of a teaspoonful of ground mace, ¼ of a teaspoonful of nutmeg, ¼ of a teaspoonful of pepper, ¼ of a teaspoonful of cayenne, clarified butter.”

“Method Pass the ham 2 or 3 times through a mincing machine, or chop it finely, pound it well in a mortar with the seasoning, and rub it through a fine sieve. Put it into a buttered pie-dish, cover with a buttered paper, and bake in a moderate oven for about ¾ of an hour. When done, press into small pots, and as soon as it is quite cold cover with clarified butter.”

To update it, I used butter instead of the fat in the original recipe.

My ingredients were:

400gms of cured ham
150gms of clarified butter
3 pinches of ground mace
A large pinch of Cayenne pepper.

I cooked two cured ham hocks in a roasting pan, tightly covered with foil and with a little water in the pan. These cooked for about 4 hours at 140°C.
I stripped the ham off them while they were still hot and put the 400 gm of ham that they yielded into my food processor.
I added all the other ingredients and ground it to a fine paste.
I was going to put it into small pots, top with a sage leaf, and seal it with more clarified butter. However, my wife decided otherwise, and it didn’t last long enough to bother!

To serve, I softened it by microwaving on ‘defrost’ until soft enough to spread on bread, toast, crackers or melba toast.

Next time I’ll probably not bother clarifying the butter, and will add some of the cooking liquid when mixing it; hopefully then it will spread straight from the fridge.

It’s a nice alternative to ham hock terrine.

Some other snacks and starters:

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