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To Fry Beef Heel
Cut the feet into any shape desired, pour vinegar over them, and fry in hot fat.
A single line that assumes knowledge no longer common: this is the last step of a much longer process, not the whole of it.
- The hinge: the feet must already be cookedBeef heel is largely skin, tendon and collagen, and it needs long simmering, on the order of several hours, before it is edible. The book appears to record only the finishing step, which suggests the reader was expected to start from boiled heel. Frying it raw would not soften it.
- "Beef heel" and "feet"The terms are used interchangeably here for the lower leg and foot of the ox, sold today as cow heel or beef foot, usually split lengthwise by the butcher. Ask for it cut across the bone; a whole foot is not something to tackle with a domestic knife.
- The vinegarPlain cider or malt vinegar, poured over the cooked pieces. The recipe gives no steeping time, and the wording suggests a brief dousing rather than a long marinade. It cuts the gelatinous richness.
- "Hot fat"Shallow-frying in beef dripping or lard, hot enough to colour the surface quickly. The pieces are already cooked through, so this is a matter of colour and crust rather than cooking time.
- Dry the pieces firstCooked heel is wet and gelatinous, and vinegar makes it wetter. Blot it thoroughly before it goes near the pan, or the fat will spit violently and the surface will never brown.
- Coating, if wantedEgg-and-crumbed or floured cow heel appears in other period cookery, and the original's silence on the point is not a prohibition. A light dusting of seasoned flour may give a better result than bare meat.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantity; a split beef foot will feed roughly two or three as a main dish. Salt and pepper it after frying and serve hot with mustard, more vinegar, or a sharp sauce; it sets to a firm jelly as it cools.
Cow heel belongs to the long tradition of cheap gelatinous cuts that carried working-class cooking in Britain and America, alongside tripe, trotters and neat's foot. The whole animal was used, and the foot -- worthless as a roast -- yielded both a rich jellied stock and, once boiled soft, a substantial fried dish. Tripe-and-cow-heel shops were a fixture of northern English industrial towns into the twentieth century. The brevity of this entry is itself a period detail: a household cookbook of the era could assume its reader knew that feet were boiled long before they were fried, and needed to be told only what to do at the end. As offal fell out of general use after mid-century the knowledge went with it, which is why the instruction now reads as incomplete.