The regional table / Vermont

Vermont Maple-Glazed Ham

Published September 23, 2026 · Vermont

The oldest Vermont ham recipe I could find sweetens with cider and white sugar and never mentions maple once. That absence is worth knowing before you glaze anything, because it tells you maple is here on its merits and not on a tradition.

The Dewey Cook Book, compiled by the Women of the Auxiliary to the Young Men's Christian Association of Montpelier, Vermont, and printed by the Argus and Patriot Press in 1899, has a recipe called simply Boiled Ham. Wash a ten pound ham and soak it overnight in enough water to cover with a cup of strong vinegar added; in the morning put it in just enough boiling water to cover, add one quart of sweet cider, simmer gently for three hours; then remove the skin, set it fat side up in a baking pan, stick in a dozen cloves, baste with sugar and cider and bake until a nice brown. It is a maple state's community cookbook and the ham is glazed with cane sugar. The same book's maple recipes are all sweets — parfait, fondant, sugar candy, a maple cream.

The federal farm literature says the same thing from the other direction. Farmers' Bulletin 1186, Pork on the Farm: Killing, Curing, and Canning, in the 1921 revision, gives its Formula No. 1 for each 100 pounds of meat as 8 pounds of salt, 2 and a half pounds of molasses or sirup made from sugar and applied hot, 2 ounces of saltpeter, 3 ounces of black pepper and 2 ounces of red pepper. Maple does appear in that bulletin, but in the smokehouse rather than the cure: green hickory or maple wood, it says, is the best fuel for smoking, hard wood being preferable to soft, and resinous woods never to be used. So the honest account is that maple came to the ham late and from the glaze end, and the recipe below treats it as a finishing sugar with a job to do rather than as folklore.

Why this version works

Gentle first, fierce last. The ham is already cooked; the only job in the first two hours is to bring the middle up without drying the outside, which is what a covered pan at 325°F over an inch of cider does. The glaze then needs real heat to set — 425°F for the last half hour, in three coats ten minutes apart, so each one dries to a lacquer before the next goes on.

Vinegar and mustard against a cup of sugar. A cup of maple syrup is about 190 grams of sugar going onto one joint of meat. Three tablespoons of cider vinegar and two of mustard are not a flourish; they are the only thing standing between a glazed ham and a dessert. The 1899 Montpelier recipe reaches for the same balance from a different direction, soaking its ham overnight in water with a cup of strong vinegar.

The syrup is reduced before it ever touches the ham. Maple syrup at legal density is about a third water — the United States Standards for Grades of Maple Syrup require finished syrup to be not less than 66 percent solids by weight and not more than 68.9. Poured straight onto a hot ham, that water runs off into the pan, taking the sugar with it, and what burns on the pan floor is the glaze you meant to eat. Ten minutes of simmering with vinegar and mustard takes a cup down to two-thirds and turns it into something that clings.

Very Dark syrup, because the sweetness has to carry over cured pork. Under the grade standards that took effect on 2 March 2015, Grade A splits into four colour-and-flavour classes: Golden with Delicate Taste, Amber with Rich Taste, Dark with Robust Taste, and Very Dark with Strong Taste. The standard defines Robust as a stronger maple taste than the lighter colours and Strong as a maple taste stronger than robust. Against a salty, smoked, eight-pound ham, anything lighter than Dark is a waste of money.

Ingredient notes

Cider: two cups of sweet cider in the pan, which is the 1899 Montpelier quantity scaled down from a simmering pot to a roasting pan. It keeps the bottom from scorching, it steams the ham, and it becomes the base of anything you want to make from the drippings.

Mustard: two tablespoons of smooth Dijon, or one tablespoon of dry mustard slaked in a little cider. Whole-grain looks handsome in the pan and falls off the ham in the oven.

The ham: eight pounds, bone-in, smoked, fully cooked, shank end. Read the label, because it is a legal statement. Under 9 CFR 319.104, which dates from 49 FR 14879 of 13 April 1984, a cooked ham may be called simply Ham only at a minimum meat protein fat-free content of 20.5 percent; at 18.5 it must say with natural juices, at 17.0 it must say water added, and below that it is labelled Ham and Water Product with the percentage of added ingredients stated. Buy the first or the second. A water-added ham weeps into the pan and dilutes the glaze while you are trying to set it.

Maple syrup: one cup, Grade A Very Dark with Strong Taste, or Dark with Robust Taste if that is what the shop has. If the label says Vermont maple it is making a claim with law behind it — 6 V.S.A. § 493a allows that phrase only for products containing maple products produced in Vermont as the chapter defines them, and the chapter defines a maple product as one whose sugar content is entirely derived from pure maple sap with nothing added.

Step by step

Temper and trim. Take the ham out of the fridge 90 minutes ahead. If it has a thick rind, pare it off leaving about a quarter inch of fat; if it is already skinned, leave it alone. Heat the oven to 325°F.
Score and set the pan. Cut a diamond pattern through the fat about a quarter inch deep and an inch apart, stopping short of the meat. Stand the ham cut side down in a roasting pan and pour the cider around it — not over it.
Bake covered. Tent tightly with foil and bake about 15 minutes per pound, roughly 2 hours for 8 pounds, until a thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone reads 115 to 120°F. Check after 90 minutes; hams vary more than their weight suggests.
Reduce the glaze. While it heats, simmer the maple syrup, cider vinegar, mustard and black pepper in a small saucepan over medium heat for 8 to 12 minutes, until it has reduced by about a third and falls from the spoon in a thick thread. It thickens further off the heat.
Glaze in three coats. Raise the oven to 425°F. Uncover, brush a third of the glaze over the whole surface, and return it for 10 minutes. Brush again, 10 minutes. Brush the last of it on and give it 8 to 12 minutes more, until the internal temperature reads 135 to 140°F and the surface is dark and set. Watch it — sugar goes from mahogany to black in about two minutes at this heat.
Rest and carve. Fifteen minutes on a board, loosely tented. Carve down to the bone in slices and then along it to free them. Skim the fat off the pan juices and serve them alongside.

If the glaze slid off and is burning on the pan floor, it was not reduced enough. Pull the ham out, pour half a cup of cider into the hot pan and scrape it clean, then reduce what you scraped up with two more tablespoons of syrup for four minutes and brush that on instead — it is darker and better than the original. If the surface has gone past mahogany into black in patches, take it out immediately, scrape the worst off with the back of a knife and glaze once more with unreduced syrup for three minutes at 350°F; the bitterness lives only in the crust. And if the middle is still cold when the outside is lacquered, cover it again and drop the oven to 300°F rather than pushing the heat — the glaze is finished and the meat is not.

Storage and make-ahead

Five days refrigerated, wrapped so it does not dry at the cut face. Slices reheat best covered in a low oven with a spoonful of cider, not in the microwave, which drives the salt forward and makes the glaze rubbery.

The bone is worth as much as the meat. Freeze it and build a pot of beans or a split pea soup on it within three months. Freeze sliced ham flat in portions for the same period.

What to serve with it

Scalloped potatoes, or anything else starchy and unseasoned that can take the salt and the sweet. Sharp pickled things earn their place here too: mustard pickle, or cucumbers in cider vinegar.

Sweet cider, hot or cold, for the obvious reason that a quart of it is already in the 1899 version of this ham.

From the recipe box / Vermont

Vermont Maple-Glazed Ham

A bone-in ham warmed gently over cider, then finished in three coats of maple syrup reduced with vinegar and mustard until it is thick enough to stay where you put it.

Prep: 20 min
Cook: 2 hr 45 min
Total: 3 hr 20 min
Serves: 12
Calories: 390 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

8 pounds bone-in fully cooked smoked ham, shank end
2 cups sweet cider, for the pan
1 cup Grade A Very Dark or Dark maple syrup
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

Instructions

Bring the ham to room temperature for 90 minutes and heat the oven to 325°F.
Score the fat in diamonds ¼ inch deep, stand the ham in a roasting pan and pour the cider around it.
Cover tightly with foil and bake about 15 minutes per pound, to an internal 115–120°F.
Simmer the maple syrup, vinegar, mustard and pepper 8–12 minutes, until reduced by a third and thickly threading off the spoon.
Raise the oven to 425°F, uncover, and brush on a third of the glaze; bake 10 minutes. Repeat twice, the last for 8–12 minutes, to an internal 135–140°F.
Rest 15 minutes, carve to the bone, and serve with the skimmed pan juices.

Nutrition

Fat	17 g (6 g saturated)
Sodium	1750 mg
Protein	40 g
Serving	About 6 oz carved meat with glaze
Calories	390
Cholesterol	90 mg
Carbohydrates	14 g (13 g sugar, 0 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Which label should I buy?

One that says Ham, or Ham with Natural Juices. Those correspond to a minimum meat protein fat-free content of 20.5 and 18.5 percent under 9 CFR 319.104. Water Added is 17.0 percent, and anything below that must be labelled Ham and Water Product with the added percentage stated on the front. The lower you go, the more liquid comes out in the pan and the harder it is to get a glaze to set.

Can I use a spiral-cut ham?

You can, but glaze it in two coats rather than three and drop the covered stage to about 12 minutes a pound. Spiral cuts expose an enormous amount of surface and dry out quickly; the cider in the pan matters more than ever, and so does taking it out at 135°F.

Why reduce the syrup first?

Because the federal standard makes finished maple syrup at least 66 percent solids by weight, which means up to about a third of what is in the bottle is water. On a 425°F ham that water leaves immediately and carries the sugar into the pan with it. Reducing the cup to two-thirds before it goes near the meat is the difference between a lacquer and a scorched roasting tin.

Is maple-glazed ham an old Vermont dish?

Not on any evidence I could reach. The 1899 Montpelier community cookbook glazes its ham with sugar and cider, and USDA's farm pork bulletin of 1921 calls for molasses or a sirup made from sugar in the cure and names maple only as smoking fuel. Maple belongs on this ham because it is the right sugar for the job in the state that makes it, not because a document says it was always done.