If you intend keeping them some time, you must make a fresh pickle for them every other day.
The very finest pork must be used for these hams. Mix together an equal quantity of powdered saltpetre and brown sugar, and rub it well into the hams. Next day make a pickle in sufficient quantity to cover them very well. The proportions of the ingredients are a pound of fine salt, mixed with a pound of brown sugar, an ounce of black pepper and an ounce of cloves pounded to powder, a small bit of sal prunella, and a quart of stale strong beer or porter. Boil them all together, so as to make a pickle that will bear up an egg. Pour it boiling hot over the meat, and let it lie in the pickle two weeks, turning it two or three times every day, and basting or washing it with the liquid. Then take out the hams, rub them with bran and smoke them for a fortnight. When done, keep them in a barrel of fine charcoal.
In cooking these hams simmer them slowly for seven or eight hours.
To imitate the shape of the real Westphalia hams, cut some of the meat off the under side of the thick part, so as to give them a flat appearance. Do this before you begin to cure them, first loosening the skin and afterwards sewing it on again.
The ashes in which you keep them must be changed frequently, wiping the hams when you take them out.
With a brush or quill feather go all over the ham with beaten yolk of egg. Then cover it thickly with pounded cracker, made as fine as flour, or with grated crumbs of stale bread. Lastly go over it with thick cream. Put it to brown in the oven of a stove, or brown it on the spit of a tin roaster, set before the fire and turned frequently.
This glazing will be found delicious. It should be put on half an inch thick, so as to form a crust.
Wipe it all over with a sponge dipped in warm water. Then rub the skin with lard or nice dripping. Cover the fat with sheets of paper two double, buttered, and tied on with packthread that has been soaked to keep it from burning. Or, what is still better, you may cover the first sheets of paper with a coarse paste of flour and water rolled out half an inch thick, and then cover the paste with the second sheets of paper, securing the whole well with the string to prevent its falling off. Place the venison on the spit before a strong clear fire, such as you would have for a sirloin of beef, and let the fire be well kept up all the time. Put some claret and butter into the dripping-pan and baste the meat with it frequently. If wrapped in paste, it will not be done in less than five hours. Half an hour before you take it up, remove the coverings carefully, place the meat nearer to the fire, baste it with fresh butter and dredge it very lightly with flour. Send it to table with fringed white paper wrapped round the bone, and its own gravy well skimmed. Have currant jelly to eat with it. As venison chills immediately, the plates should be kept on heaters.