A baked spiced ham

This looks festive and like a proper feast when you put it on the table.

But first, I'll try to clear up any confusion over ham, gammon and bacon. Even then, I read different things.

Really, it is possible to cure any part of the pig -- so that it would all end up as either bacon or ham. If it isn't cured, it isn't ham or bacon, it's another cut of pork. Technically, though, only the back leg is really a ham and two back legs could provide you with four hams.

Bacon can be made from pretty much any part of the pig, with, in my opinion, the best coming from the belly to give you streaky bacon. Mrs Beeton describes as bacon the whole side of pork from which head (for brawn) and feet (for trotters) have been removed. My family refers to boiled cured pork as bacon -- hence the title of this!

So what's gammon? Looking at some contemporary cookery writers, I see they describe the meat as gammon before boiling and ham when it's cooked. Mrs Beeton tells us that gammon is boiled for ham. My understanding, though, is that a gammon is the largest piece of meat from the lower part of the leg. That's a traditional gammon. The other bits would be the slipper gammon and the corner gammon. Ask your butcher because you can get some bargains here.

You need about a 2 kg of gammon. If you think it will be very salty, either leave it to soak for an hour in two in cold water or bring it to the boil, throw out the water and bring it ot the boil again in fresh water. The meat will probably be cooked in about two hours.

Out it comes, ket it cool slightly and then take off the outer layer of fat from the meat. Now, take a sharp knife and make criss cross patterns across the remaining skin. Now massage in two tablespoons of blackstrap molasses or black treacle and the same of wholegrain mustard.

Mix the two together and rub well into the meat. All over it. Now, into each square left by your careful criss-crossing, press a clove. Into a medium hot oven it goes until this sugary, salty glaze beings to shimmer and crackle. It will smell like Christmas in July. It should take only about fifteen minutes to bake.

You can either serve this hot or cold. For July the 4th, I always have it cold.

Now, this is not authentically Southern. I've just evolved a way we like it in our house. You could, for example, cook the gammon in cocoa cola, which gives it a taste redolent of a proper Southern pulled pork barbeque, with its vinegar based sauce (there is another, which is tomato based, by the way). My gammon (or ham, I could say) is actually closer to the baked spiced meats of merrie England. If you want to know more about Spiced beef, Barbados ham or Leicestershire or Lincolnshire spiced or herbed bacon or gammon, may I refer you to Elizabeth David's Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen?