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Lamb's Feet
Clean, and wash well, and scald six lamb's feet. Remove the shankbones very carefully, so as not to break the skin, then let the feet soak for two or three hours in cold water. Drain them, put them into a stewpan, with as much cold water as will barely cover them, and two table-spoonfuls of strained lemon-juice. Let them boil for ten or fifteen minutes, then throw them into cold water, and when they are quite cool cut off the bones from the cleft of the foot, and the little piece of hair that lies in it. Afterwards, stew them for three hours in some white stock, and with them an onion, a bunch of parsley, and thyme, three or four mushrooms, half a dozen peppercorns, a blade of mace, and a slice of lean ham. Strain the sauce, thicken it with flour and butter, and add half a pint of new milk. Let the feet boil up once more in it, and add, the last thing, a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice. Serve on a hot dish, and send peas or asparagus to table. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A Victorian white stew of lamb's trotters, mild and gelatinous, finished in a milk-enriched velouté. Nothing here is difficult, but the preparation of the feet themselves is most of the work and the part the original assumes you already know.
- Sourcing the feetLamb's feet are not a supermarket item but halal, Greek, Caribbean and Mexican butchers usually have them, often already scalded and scraped. Ask for them split or with the shank bone left long, and count on six for two to three servings as the book says.
- The cleaning is the hingeAny hair or grit left in the cleft of the hoof will taint the whole white sauce, since there is no strong flavouring to hide behind. Scald, scrape, and after the first boiling of ten to fifteen minutes go over each foot again with a small knife and pull out the tuft in the cleft before the long stew.
- Why the lemon juiceThe acid in the first boiling keeps the skin pale rather than grey, the same logic as cooking sweetbreads or calf's head à la poulette. It is not for flavour; the flavouring lemon goes in at the very end.
- White stockA light unroasted veal or chicken stock, unsalted or barely salted, since it reduces over three hours. Trotters release a great deal of gelatine, so the strained sauce will set firmly when cold and needs gentle rewarming.
- New milk"New milk" is simply fresh whole milk, as opposed to the skimmed or turned milk a Victorian kitchen also kept. Half a pint is 10 fl oz in British measure, about 1 1/4 cups.
- A blade of maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg; one blade is roughly a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace, though the whole blade is better here because it can be strained out. Discard it with the aromatics.
- ThickeningFlour and butter kneaded raw in equal weight and whisked into the strained hot stock in small pieces, about 1 oz of each to a pint of liquid. Let it come to a boil to lose the raw flour taste before the milk goes in.
- TimingThree hours of gentle stewing is not exaggerated for trotters, which need long, slow heat to turn the connective tissue tender. Keep it barely simmering; a hard boil will shred the skin off the bones. A pressure cooker does the same job in about 45 minutes if you are willing to lose the visual neatness.
- ServingPeas or asparagus alongside is the period pairing and a sound one, since the dish itself is pale and rich. Boiled or steamed potatoes and plenty of bread also earn their place with a sauce this gelatinous.
Feet, ears, cheeks and heads were staple materials in nineteenth-century British cookery because they were cheap, and Cassell's records the cost frankly: one shilling and threepence for a dish feeding two or three persons. The treatment here is the standard "white" method applied across the offal repertoire, blanch with acid to keep the flesh pale, stew long in a light stock with an onion, a bundle of herbs and a slice of ham for savour, then bind the strained liquor into a velout infinfinished with milk and lemon. Sheep's and lamb's trotters remained popular street and supper food in Britain into the twentieth century, sold boiled from barrows in the industrial towns, and they survive as everyday cooking in Greece, Turkey, North Africa and much of South Asia, where the gelatine is prized rather than apologised for. This dictionary appears in the era when such economies were still assumed knowledge in a middle-class kitchen.