Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pig's Ears
Pig's Ears
Pig's ears are generally dressed together with the feet. They may, however, be stuffed and stewed as follows. Bone an anchovy, and pound it to a paste. Mix with it six ounces of grated bread-crumbs, two ounces of minced veal, four ounces of shredded suet, a tea-spoonful of shredded parsley, and two or three sage-leaves. Season this forcemeat with salt and cayenne, and bind it together with the yolks of two eggs. Take two or four ears which have been already soaked for some hours and partially boiled. Raise the skin of the upper side, and fill them with the stuffing. Fry them in hot fat till they are brightly browned, drain them well, and stew them gently in three-quarters of a pint of very rich brown gravy, nicely flavoured and highly seasoned. Serve the ears on a hot dish, with the gravy strained and poured round them. If liked, a puree of peas can be sent to table with them. Time to stew, half an hour. Probable cost, uncertain, pig's ears being generally sold with the head. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A Victorian offal dish that survives largely intact in Chinese, Spanish and Southern American cooking, so the raw material is easier to find now than it was thirty years ago. The whole thing hinges on the pre-cooking: the ears must be simmered until the cartilage is yielding before they are stuffed, or nothing later in the recipe will rescue them.
- Buy them properly cleanedAsk a butcher or an Asian or Latin American market for fresh pig's ears; frozen ones are common and fine. Check the outer edges and folds for bristles and scrape or singe off anything remaining before soaking.
- "Partially boiled" means longer than it soundsThe recipe assumes a cook who already knew this step. Expect 1 to 1.5 hours at a bare simmer in aromatic water before the ear is pliable enough to take stuffing and hold its shape; it should still have bite, since another half hour follows in the gravy.
- Raising the skinThe pocket is made by sliding a small sharp knife between the skin of the convex upper side and the cartilage, working a shallow flap without piercing through. Fill it loosely and close with a cocktail stick or a short trussing stitch, or the forcemeat swells out in the fat.
- Quantities and the forcemeatSix ounces of breadcrumbs, two of minced veal, four of shredded suet: this makes far more stuffing than two to four ears will hold. Halve it, or bake the remainder as forcemeat balls alongside. Shredded beef suet is available frozen; cold grated butter is one common substitute, though it gives a softer set.
- The anchovyA boned salted anchovy pounded to paste is the original; two anchovy fillets in oil, mashed, or a scant teaspoon of anchovy paste does the same job. It is there for salt and depth, not fishiness, so hold back on the added salt until the mixture is tasted.
- VolumesThe measure is imperial, so three-quarters of a pint is about 425 ml (a little under two US cups); read as a US pint it would be nearer 350 ml. "Very rich brown gravy" means a well-reduced brown stock rather than a thin flour-thickened pan gravy; it should coat a spoon lightly once the ears have finished stewing.
- Frying stuffed, wet earsPat them thoroughly dry and lower them into the fat with a spider or tongs behind a lid. Gelatinous skin holds water and spits hard, and the browning is done in two or three minutes per side.
- Yield and servingTwo to three as the book says, and only as a small course; the texture is rich and gelatinous. The pea puree is a sound suggestion, as something starchy and plain offsets the suet.
Pig's ears belonged to the class of cheap cuts that a Victorian household bought incidentally rather than deliberately, which is why Cassell's cannot price them: they came attached to the head, and the head was typically bought for brawn. The stuffing here is a standard English veal forcemeat of the period, bread, suet, herbs and an anchovy for savour, much the sort of mixture that would have gone into hare, veal olives and forcemeat balls, and its appearance on an ear shows how thoroughly the era expected a cook to make one dish stretch across a carcass. Boiling then frying then stewing looks laborious, but each step does distinct work on cartilage-heavy meat: the simmer softens, the fry colours and firms the skin, the stew unifies. Ears fell out of British cooking during the twentieth century as offal generally did, and their return to menus has come mostly by way of Cantonese, Spanish and Southern American kitchens, where the technique was never interrupted.