Boil the calves' feet in salted water until tender; then take out the bones. Fry 1 chopped onion in butter; stir in 1 tablespoonful of flour; add 1 cup of stock. Let boil with 1 bay-leaf, some parsley chopped fine and ¼ cup of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Then add the feet and let simmer ten minutes. Stir in the yolks of an egg and serve hot.
A short entry that assumes you already know how long calves' feet take and how to finish a sauce with egg. Both are worth spelling out.
- The hinge: the egg yolkOnce the yolk goes in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle into threads. Take the pan off the heat, whisk a ladle of the hot liquid into the yolk, then stir that back in and serve immediately.
- How long "until tender" isCalves' feet need roughly 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer before the meat and skin pull cleanly from the bone. Split feet cook faster than whole; a lid slightly ajar keeps the liquid from reducing to glue.
- Sourcing the feetNo supermarket keeps them on display. Order from a halal or kosher butcher, a Polish or Latin American market, or ask a full-service counter to split two feet for you. Two feet serve about four people.
- Scald and clean firstFeet come with hair and grit. Blanch them for ten minutes in plain water, drain, scrape and rinse, then start the salted cooking water. The finished sauce will be far clearer for it.
- "The yolks of an egg"The original slips between plural and singular; one yolk is enough to bind a cup of stock. Two makes a richer, more custard-like sauce and needs the same off-heat caution.
- The vinegarA quarter cup is a great deal of vinegar for a single cup of stock, and vinegar strength varies. Start with two tablespoons of white wine vinegar, taste after the ten-minute simmer, and add more if the gelatin tastes flat.
- Save the cooking liquidThe water the feet boiled in is heavily gelatinous stock. Strain it and use a cup of it in place of the "1 cup of stock" called for; it sets to a firm jelly when cold.
- ServingHot, with boiled potatoes or dark bread to catch the sour sauce. The dish is rich and slightly sticky on the lips, which is the point of it.
Calves' feet were prized across Central and Eastern Europe less for their meat than for the gelatin they give up, and Polish cookery uses them two ways: hot in a sharp, sour sauce as here, or chilled into n i — n ezki w galarecie, the set jelly still eaten with vinegar and horseradish at Polish tables. The combination of vinegar, bay and a yolk liaison places this in the older European tradition of sweet-sour and sharpened sauces for offal and gelatinous cuts, a way of cutting richness. The book assigns one dish per day and one nation per dish, so "Polish" here stands in for a whole cuisine, and the compiler chose a preparation that a period American household could still buy the parts for — feet, ears and heads were ordinary butcher's stock and cost little.