Gourmet Magazine's Ham Dinner
In the April issue of Gourmet, although Easter is not specifically mentioned, ham was the subject of three features and a glistening glazed ham graced the cover. In characteristic style, Gourmet's head chef, Louis P. De Gouy, began his feature with historical anecdotes before launching into details on the various methods for preparing a traditional country ham, which required scrubbing to remove the patina of spices, dust and mold and a long soaking to leach out some of the salt before the ham could be boiled or baked and eaten. He wrote that Virginia ham, which he felt was the best of the country hams, should be boiled before it is baked, then served cold and sliced thin.
He included a number of alternative preparations. His Ham Gourmet began with a precooked ham, which he wrapped in glassine paper and baked in a slow oven. He trimmed the rind, scored the remaining layer of fat, necessary to keep the ham from drying out while baking, and studded it with cloves then sprinkled it with brown sugar and brandy. Like Anne Batchelder, he added the syrup from pickled fruit, in his case, sweet pickled cherries, as a basting liquid. He served the ham with whole cherries and orange cherry cups, made of a syrup of canned red cherries, brown sugar, granulated sugar, tarragon vinegar, sherry, a cinnamon stick and whole cloves, served in orange peel shells. The traditional accompaniments to Ham Gourmet, he wrote, were creamed onions and cabbage lightly cooked.
Other ham recipes from De Gouy included:
· Havana gilded ham, with a guava jelly glaze, served with baked sweet potatoes and creamed lettuce
· Ham Steak Creole, buttered and covered in brown sugar, baked in a hot oven and served with ripe black olives wrapped in anchovy fillets
· Grilled Ham Slice Café Martin, which De Gouy said was served nostalgically at the Lafayette, a popular French bistro in Greenwich Village patronized by the moneyed Bohemian set, in memory of the defunct Café Martin, once the premier hangout of the city’s French colony. For this recipe, ham slices were covered in anchovy paste, butter and bread crumbs and broiled. Cranberry sauce, French fries and a green salad were the traditional accompaniments.
Founded in 1941, Gourmet had pretty much ignored wartime shortages and rationing in its short history. Intended initially as a magazine aimed more at bon vivants, thought to be a largely male demographic, than at housewives, it carried extensive restaurant reviews as well as articles and short stories on hunting and fishing. It quickly became the bible for competitive dinner hostesses with an especially large circulation in Washington D.C., where formal dinner parties were de rigueur.
The main recipe section was the responsibility of Louis P. De Gouy, who held the title Gourmet Chef. De Gouy, in his seventies, was one of a dwindling remnant of chefs in New York who had trained in cuisine classique with Escoffier. His father had been head chef to the Hapsburg and Belgian courts. De Gouy fils had cooked at hotel dining rooms in London and New York, notably the Knickerbocker Hotel, and had been chef aboard J.P. Morgan’s yacht. His natural métier was grand banquet dining but he wrote cookbooks on soda fountain foods and sandwiches as well. De Gouy’s encyclopedic masterwork, The Gold Cook Book, was published in 1947 and covered a variety of international cuisines as well as American and French recipes. He was particularly concerned with adapting foreign recipes to available American ingredients, even when at times this meant utilizing processed American cheese food and canned soups or including grossly inauthentic recipes like liver chow mein.
De Gouy and his cohorts laid the groundwork for the “continental” cuisine that came to prevail in hotel dining rooms and which fell out of style in the '70s and '80s. His writing was enlivened with anecdotes and stories, some historical, many probably apocryphal, about the food he was preparing. He died one week after the publication of The Gold Cook Book, while attending a hotel exposition at the Grand Central Palace. The Gold Cook Book survived another two decades in multiple reprints, and several new cookbooks under his byline were published posthumously. He still has his fans and some of his recipes can be found today on the Internet.