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Pig's Feet and Ears, Fried in Batter
Wash and cleanse the feet and ears of a fully-grown pig, and let them lie in salt for four or five days. The day before they are to be served, boil them gently in a quart of water, with an onion, a carrot, a bunch of savoury herbs, a stick of celery, and a little pepper and salt. When they are done enough, take them up, drain them, cut the feet in two, lengthwise, draw out the large bone, and press them, with the ears, between two dishes, until they are stiff and cold. Two hours before they are wanted, make a batter, by mixing five ounces of flour and a pinch of salt smoothly with a gill of water. Beat the yolks of two eggs to a paste, with two table-spoonfuls of oil; stir this into the flour, and put the mixture aside. Twenty minutes before it is to be used, add the whisked whites of the eggs, and a little more water if the batter is too thick. Beat it well; dip into it the pig's feet and ears, and fry in hot fat until they are equally and lightly browned. Drain them, and serve on a hot napkin. If liked, a gravy, made of two or three table-spoonfuls of the liquid in which they were boiled, mixed with a little vinegar, may be sent to table with them. Time: the feet and ears must be boiled till tender; twenty minutes to fry them. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A two-day dish in a Victorian idiom: the feet and ears are salted, simmered soft, pressed cold, then battered and fried. Most of the work is passive, but two of the original's numbers need correcting.
- The hinge: press them coldThe gelatine in trotters and ears sets firm only when weighted and thoroughly chilled. Press between two dishes with a weight on top, in the refrigerator overnight; warm or soft pieces will slump off the batter in the fat.
- Twenty minutes of frying is far too longTwenty minutes of frying is longer than a single batch needs -- The meat is already cooked through, so the fry is only to set and colour the batter, which takes a few minutes in hot fat; the original's twenty minutes most likely covers frying the pieces in several batches. A single long immersion would give a dark, greasy crust.
- The saltingFour or five days in dry salt is a flavour and firming step, not a preserving cure — there is no nitrite here. Do it in a covered dish in the refrigerator, turning daily, and rinse well before boiling or the finished dish will be inedibly salty.
- "Boil till tender" means hoursReckon on 2½ to 3 hours at a bare simmer for trotters, 1½ to 2 for ears. They are done when a skewer meets no resistance and the skin is translucent. A quart of water will not cover them in a wide pan; use a narrow one and top up as needed.
- A gill, in a British bookCassell's gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or about two-thirds of a US cup. Five ounces of flour is roughly a cup and two tablespoons — weigh it if you can, since the batter should coat rather than cling in blobs.
- Buying the partsTrotters and ears both need ordering from a butcher. Ears in particular arrive with bristle: singe over a flame or scrape with a knife before salting, and check the trotters between the toes.
- The separated batterResting the yolk batter and folding in the whisked whites twenty minutes before use is essentially a fritter batter and worth following exactly — it gives a light shell that a straight flour-and-water coating will not.
- Serving"A hot napkin" is a folded cloth on the platter to absorb fat; a rack over a warm plate does the job now. Five or six portions, and the sharp vinegar gravy is not optional in practice — the meat is rich and gelatinous.
Pig's feet and ears occupied a particular place in Victorian cookery: cheap, gelatinous cuts that repaid long cooking and were far too useful to waste, whether jellied, grilled, or, as here, crumbed or battered and fried. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery catalogued them alongside the grander joints because a household dictionary was expected to cover the whole animal, and trotters in particular were a staple of the tripe shop, the cookshop and the supper table well into the twentieth century. The batter treatment is often said to be a French borrowing \porc en marinade and its relatives dip cooked, pressed trotters in a light frying batter, though the connection may be no more than a resemblance: the fried shell gives crispness to a cut that is otherwise all soft skin and gelatine. The salting step, common to many nineteenth-century trotter recipes, firms the flesh and seasons it through; before mechanical refrigeration it may also have bought a few days' grace on an offal cut that spoils quickly.