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Neat's Feet Soup
Take two neat's feet which have been merely scalded and cleaned, not boiled. Put them into a stewpan with three quarts of good stock, one pound of pickled pork, a bundle of sweet herbs, and the rind and juice of a small lemon; simmer gently for four hours until the liquid is reduced to about half its original quantity and the bones leave the flesh easily. Strain the soup; cut the meat into convenient-sized pieces, and return both again to the saucepan, adding one pint of strong beef-gravy and a glassful of sherry. Season with a little cayenne and salt, if necessary; boil up once more, and serve. Time, five hours. Probable cost of feet, 8d. each. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A long-simmered gelatinous soup built on ox feet, the Victorian equivalent of a collagen-rich broth. Nothing here is difficult, but the shopping list has aged more than the method.
- Neat's feet"Neat" is the old word for cattle, so these are ox or cow feet; calf's feet were used interchangeably and are richer in gelatine. Ask a halal or Caribbean butcher for split cow feet, or substitute two split veal feet or four pounds of meaty veal knuckle. Feet sold today are usually already scalded and scraped, which is what the recipe means by "merely scalded and cleaned".
- Pickled porkSalt-cured, unsmoked belly or shoulder, sold wet from the brine tub. Green (unsmoked) streaky bacon in the piece or a lightly cured salt pork is the closest match. Soak it an hour or two if it is heavily salted, and taste before adding any salt at the end.
- QuantitiesThree quarts is 12 cups by US measure, but in a British source three imperial quarts is nearer 14 US cups; either way it is reduced by about half. The pint of gravy is 2 US cups, or 2½ if read as an imperial pint. A wine glassful in this period is usually reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz, though the measure was never standardised. Use a dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry.
- Strong beef-gravyNot a thickened pan sauce but a heavily reduced brown beef stock, near demi-glace in strength. A cup or two of well-reduced beef stock, or demi-glace loosened with water, does the same job.
- Degrease before servingFeet and pickled pork throw a great deal of fat. Strain, chill the liquid until the fat sets, and lift it off, or the soup will be greasy under all that gelatine. The original does not mention the step.
- Lemon rindPare it in strips with no white pith and fish it out before the four hours are up; left in, the pith turns the broth bitter. The juice is better added at the end, with the sherry, where it cuts the richness.
- TimingsFour hours of bare simmering is right for feet, and the doneness cue given here is the reliable one: the bones should slip free of the flesh. A pressure cooker reaches the same point in about 90 minutes, though the broth clarifies less well.
- Yield and settingSix to eight bowls as written. Any left over will set to a firm jelly in the refrigerator; that is the gelatine doing its work, not a fault, and it melts again on gentle reheating.
Neat's feet were cheap — the recipe itself puts them at eightpence each — and they were valued precisely for the gelatine that made soups, jellies and "restorative" broths set. The same raw material gave the period neat's-foot oil for softening leather and the calf's-foot jelly carried to invalids in countless nineteenth-century novels. The dish is a demonstration of extracting body from connective tissue rather than from flour or cream, the same principle behind aspic and clear turtle soup. The finishing pint of strong gravy and glass of sherry mark it as a dish for the dining room rather than the sickroom, dressing a poverty cut up into something a household would serve to guests.