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Neat's Feet, Potted
Boil two neat's feet in a small quantity of water until the flesh easily leaves the bones. Cut the meat into small pieces, and place these neatly in a mould. Season a small quantity of the liquid with salt, cayenne, and a little mace; pour it upon the meat, and when cold and stiff turn it out on a dish, and garnish with parsley. Time, four hours or more to simmer the feet. Probable cost, 8d. each. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A cold jellied meat that relies entirely on the gelatine cooked out of the feet — no packet gelatine, no stock cube. The whole dish stands or falls on how far you reduce the cooking liquid.
- What a neat's foot is"Neat" is the old word for ox or cow, so these are cow's feet, sold split at halal, Caribbean and Chinese butchers and often labelled cow heel. Calf's feet or pig's trotters work the same way; trotters give a softer, fattier set.
- Buy them cleanedFeet arrive scalded and scraped from a butcher today, but check between the cloven halves and singe off any remaining hair. Scrub well and blanch for five minutes in fresh water, then discard that water, before starting the four-hour simmer.
- "A small quantity of water" is the hingeBarely cover the feet and keep the pot at a bare tremble, not a boil. Too much water and the jelly will not set; if in doubt, strain the liquid at the end and reduce it hard until a spoonful chilled on a saucer sets firm in ten minutes.
- Skim, then defatSkim the scum in the first half hour, and chill the strained liquid so the fat cap lifts off in one piece. Fat left in will streak the finished jelly white and make it greasy on the tongue.
- Season above your instinctCold food reads flat. Salt and cayenne the hot liquid until it tastes slightly too strong, since chilling mutes it considerably. Mace here means the blade or a pinch of ground — a lighter, more delicate relative of nutmeg.
- Setting and turning outPack the meat into a wetted mould or loaf tin, pour over the liquid, and refrigerate at least six hours, preferably overnight. Dip the mould in hot water for a few seconds to release it.
- KeepingThis is not potted in the sealed, butter-capped sense — nothing protects it. Treat it as fresh cooked meat: refrigerate and eat within three days.
- Yield and servingSix to eight as the book says, but as a cold cut with mustard, pickles and bread rather than a main course. "8d. each" is eightpence per foot in Victorian money, a cheap cut.
Cassell's places this among the thrift cookery that made a Victorian kitchen work: feet, heels and shins were among the cheaper cuts, and the collagen in them delivered a set jelly at no extra cost long before commercial gelatine was cheap and common. "Neat" for cattle is an Old English survival, still audible in neat's-foot oil, the leather dressing rendered from the same bones. Potted and moulded meats of this kind — brawn, head cheese, cow-heel jelly — were staples of the cold table and the supper tray, and boiled cow heel was a recognised street and market food in the industrial North of England well into the twentieth century. The dish faded, it is usually suggested, not because it stopped working but because cheap gelatine, refrigeration and a squeamishness about visible feet made the labour look unnecessary.