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CALF'S FOOT (a la Poulette)
Calf's feet which have been boiled for stock may (if not too much cooked) be made into an agreeable dish by serving them in a little poulette sauce. Take out the bones, press the meat till cold, and cut it into neat pieces. Put a piece of butter the size of an egg into a saucepan, let it melt, then add gradually a table-spoonful of flour. Mix the paste thoroughly with a wooden spoon for two or three minutes, until it is quite smooth; then dilute it with the third of a pint of nicely-flavoured stock, and keep on stirring for ten or fifteen minutes. Draw the saucepan from the fire for a minute or two, thicken the soup with the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, and season with a little pepper and salt. Put the pieces of calf's feet into the sauce, let them become hot, without boiling, stir in a little lemon-juice, and serve. Chopped parsley, shallots, or mushrooms should be added to this sauce. Sufficient for two feet.
A thrifty second use for feet already simmered for stock, finished with the egg-and-lemon liaison that defines sauce poulette. The whole dish turns on not letting that sauce boil.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksOnce the beaten yolks go in, keep the pan between roughly 160 and 175F — hot enough to thicken, well short of a simmer. A boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into grains that cannot be brought back.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Against one tablespoon of flour that is a very rich, loose roux by modern proportions; if you want a sauce that coats, use closer to 1 1/2 oz butter to the tablespoon of flour.
- A third of a pintCassell's works in the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so this is a little under 7 fl oz — call it three-quarters of a cup. Add it in stages and stir smooth before the next addition.
- Ten or fifteen minutes of stirringThe recipe gives no reason for so long a cook; it is the usual Victorian practice of simmering a flour-thickened sauce until the raw flour taste is gone. Five to eight minutes at a bare simmer is generally enough now; keep the heat low or it will reduce to paste.
- Sourcing calf's feetOrder them from a butcher, or look in halal, Latin American and Caribbean markets. Pig's feet behave much the same way and are far easier to find; both need long simmering until the meat slips from the bone.
- Press the meat till coldThis is not optional tidiness. The boned meat is mostly gelatin and connective tissue, and pressing it under a weighted plate in the refrigerator sets it firm enough to cut into pieces that hold their shape in the sauce.
- Lemon and aromatics lastAcid added to a yolk-thickened sauce off the heat is safe; added while it is hot and moving it can encourage curdling. Stir in the juice, parsley, shallot or cooked mushrooms at the end, off the flame.
- YieldThe line "Sufficient for two feet" describes the amount of sauce, not the number of diners. Two feet make a modest dish; serve with plain boiled potatoes or rice to take up the sauce.
Poulette is one of the small classical white sauces — a velouté finished with egg yolks, lemon juice and parsley. Its name means "young hen," and the sauce is traditionally linked to poultry stock, though the derivation is not documented. It became a common treatment for pale, gelatinous, mild ingredients: mussels, sweetbreads, tripe, brains, lamb's trotters and, as here, calf's feet. The recipe's real subject is economy. Victorian kitchens boiled calf's feet for the gelatin that stiffened jellies, aspics and blancmanges, and this recipe shows what to do with the drained-out remains, provided they were pulled from the pot before they went to rags — the recipe's own proviso, "if not too much cooked." Calf's foot was a familiar item in nineteenth-century domestic cookery both as a setting agent and, in the form of calf's-foot jelly, as a standard food for invalids.