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- Wikipedia article on ham
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How did they manage this?
Some time ago I bought some Waitrose own-brand sliced ham described on the label thus:
British Free Range Dry Cured Heather Honey Roast Hampshire Gammon Ham They seem to have got the various elements of the description hopelessly jumbled up. And to make it worse, there is no punctuation, not even a couple of judiciously placed hyphens. So let us examine what this product actually is.
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Well first of all it is ham.
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It is described as gammon ham, which is something of a tautology, because all gammon is ham, but I think we can let that one go.
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They say it is Hampshire gammon ham, but I am not aware whether this is a description of its geographical origin or of its method of curing. I know there is a Wiltshire method of curing ham, developed by the Harris family, but I had not come across Hampshire ham before.
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They describe it as free-range.
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They say it has been dry-cured
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It has then been roasted with heather honey, not just any old honey.
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It is described as British. Well, if it was produced in Hampshire, it must be British. If it is Hampshire-cured, whatever that is, it could come from anywhere. Assuming it is indeed from Hampshire, we could avoid the tautology by putting the word British in a flash above the name of the product.
So, after all that, I want to call it:
Heather-honey-roast Dry-cured Free-range Hampshire Gammon Ham Still a bit of a mouthful, but at least the various elements are in some logical order! Compare this with the description of an item regularly on the menu at the excellent restaurant in Jenners department store in Princes Street, Edinburgh last time I was there, which was a good many years ago now:
Hot roast home-fed Aberdeen Angus beef, served with (whatever) Sounds delicious, and it was! So was the ham, by the way.
- Posted August 2017
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