York ham

[5] Before refrigeration was developed country people preserved meat over the scarce months of winter by curing hams and other parts of the family pig.

[6] According to historian[7] William Stubbs, from public records of 1166 it is evident that — for whatever reason — Henry II of England got his hams from Yorkshire.

In 1740 Thomas Dyche said "this county of late years is become particularly famous for making and curing legs of pork into what are commonly called hams".

[9] Ten years later William Ellis wrote:Yorkshire, where Land, Workmen, Labour and Hogmeat, are extraordinary cheap, and their Water Carriage of Goods to London so convenient, send great Numbers of Hams every year out of that large County to the opulent City of London, so that there are now few Cheesemongers Shops there, but what sell their Hams for about five-pence a Pound.

[19] By 1861 Jambon d'York was in a book of menus for aspiring[20] French housewives[21] and an item that guests might hope to see served at balls in Paris.

[22] The first mention of York ham in a haute cuisine context is on 2 April 1851, when it appears on the menu — as jambon d'York — for a banquet given for Lord Stanley at the Merchant Taylors' Hall, London.

[23] As, increasingly, reputable products were sold in distant markets — where the consumer did not know the producer — it became easier for suppliers to substitute spurious versions.

As Richard Wilk put it: Branding began in antiquity as a means of assuring quality, by citing the geographical origin of a commodity, as in Irish beef, Port wine or a Yorkshire ham.

Yorkshire ham became a generic term for a particular style of curing, a fate of local products as diverse as Cheddar cheese and Tequila.

[25] Although Ireland made excellent bacon, it also exported large numbers of hogs "hastily and improperly fattened" for the Liverpool and Bristol markets, where they were slaughtered while still unwell from the journey and cured in unhygenic conditions.

[27] The Practical Cook, English and Foreign (1843) — its senior author claimed to have been cook to Princes Razumovsky and Esterházy — warned its readers:York, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Gloucestershire are famous for their hams, but a great proportion of the hams now sold as Yorkshire are Irish[17][28] which was missed in the first edition of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management[29] but picked up in the third.

An unsigned article in The Boston Journal of Chemistry noted: Cheshire cheese and Yorkshire hams were never plentier in England than at the present time, and many of the innocent customers in that little island are asking some impertinent questions as regards the capabilities of these famous counties to supply such vast quantities as are on sale, duly labelled, everywhere.

Urbain Dubois — who is credited with establishing the modern custom of serving dishes in sequential courses, instead of all at once — wrote that although York hams were reputed the best, the merchants of England sold many mediocre versions, which they got "from everywhere".

[34] Thus, "York" or "Yorkshire" did not guarantee high quality ham without a trustworthy supplier: one who put his personal reputation on the packaging that secured the goods.

At various times it has been claimed that a York ham should have one or more of the following attributes: a rear thigh of a pig of the Large White breed, bred, reared and killed in Yorkshire, dry-cured and aged on the bone according to a traditional procedure, in the City of York; banjo-shaped, with very white fat, a characteristic, mild savour and meat of a light colour.

Those claims are considered and referenced in the remainder of this section, but in summary, few (or no) hams today fulfil every single one of those criteria, if they ever did.

The breed originated in 19th century Yorkshire, where industrial workers around Leeds, Keighley and Skipton had a strong tradition of keenly competitive, spare-time pig-breeding.

[42] According to a Victorian academic, the Large White became famous and was taken up after a Keighley weaver, Joseph Tulley, entered one in the Royal Agricultural Society's 1851 Windsor exhibition.

The magistrate asked an inspector for the trade association if all York hams were made in Yorkshire, who replied that in adjacent counties the practice was to imitate, but it was done with English meat.

Yorkshire can, apparently, make no country claim to the title "York", but it must not be filched from us by enterprising traders across the water.

[52] (A Swiss geographer had asked the same question in 1899: "I have searched in vain among the industrial buildings for the establishments where the famous hams are prepared, which have spread the gastronomic reputation of York throughout the world".

[54] A 1966 article in The Times about traditional British food names said that "The three famous hams — Bradenham, York and Seager (Suffolk) come from all over the place.

[59] Eighteenth-century York had no notable manufactures; its economy was based on its importance as a market centre, supplied by a wide surrounding area.

Before railways, coastal shipping was very much cheaper than carriage by land,[63] and the River Ouse was commercially navigated up to the City of York.

[36] Atkinson's premises were shown as a tourist attraction: the place where York hams originated, or at least, were made famous.

[68] But these versions accept that Atkinson did not open his shop until 1861; by then, York hams were already famous in London and fashionable in Paris.

[39] Country Life once claimed that York hams must be cured within 2 miles of the city centre, without saying who mandated that requirement.

[62] For making York hams a similar slow dry curing and maturing process is used by the current (2022) Royal Warrant holders.

Alfred Suzanne's La Cuisine Anglaise (1894), a book that commended English culinary specialities to French readers ("we are forced to recognise the merit of some of them"),[81] said:York ham enjoys a universal reputation...

Madame told me especially to get a Nev'York.Olida's was a real shop — also called Maison du Jambon d'York — founded in 1885, and near to where Proust lived in Paris.