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Pig's Feet, Devilled
Boil, until the bones may be drawn from them, some feet that have been salted. Then press the halves together, and leave until cold. For a couple of feet, put in a saucepan a gill of the liquor in which they were boiled, a table-spoonful of chutney, the same of mushroom ketchup, a tea-spoonful of dry mustard, a finely minced onion, and salt to taste. When this boils up stir in an ounce of butter, and pour the whole over the feet laid flat in a stewpan. Put the lid on, and leave for a quarter of an hour. Strain the sauce over the feet and serve.
A Victorian devil built on salt-cured trotters, which do most of the work themselves; the sauce is assembled in minutes once the feet are cooked and set.
- GillA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, about 5 fl oz or 142 ml (a generous half-cup). Here it is the cooking liquor, so use the pot rather than fresh water.
- Salted feet"Feet that have been salted" means trotters cured in brine, as sold by butchers of the period. Fresh trotters work but the dish will taste flat; either brine them yourself for a day or two, or season the sauce more assertively. Salted feet should be soaked and the cooking water tasted before it goes into the sauce, or the finished dish will be inedibly salty.
- The long boil is not optional"Until the bones may be drawn" is roughly 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, longer for large trotters. Undercooked trotter is rubbery and the collagen has not yet turned to gelatine; this is the hinge of the whole dish.
- PressingSplitting the feet lengthways, pressing the halves back together and chilling sets the gelatine so they hold their shape in the stewpan. A plate with a weight on it in the refrigerator overnight does the job.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, still sold by British specialists. Worcestershire sauce or a mushroom-based soy will stand in, both being saltier, so cut back on added salt.
- ChutneyIn Victorian British usage this usually meant a sweet-sour fruit chutney, commonly of the mango kind. Chop any large fruit pieces or the sauce will not strain cleanly.
- Stewpan and heatThe recipe does not specify a heat for the quarter hour under the lid; keep it gentle, since the object is to heat the feet through and glaze them rather than cook them again — they must already be tender.
- YieldTwo feet serve two as a savoury course or one substantial supper. The sauce quantity scales directly.
Devilling — coating cooked meat, bones or poultry in mustard, cayenne and a sharp sauce, then reheating — was a standing feature of Victorian dining, a way to make second-day meat and cheap cuts into a hot savoury for supper or the end of dinner. Trotters were among the cheapest things a butcher sold, and salted trotters are often said to have been a staple of cookshops and pubs, eaten cold with vinegar. The point of such a dish is that gelatine-rich offcuts, given time, give a body that no lean joint will. The particular flavour signature here — chutney and mushroom ketchup together with dry mustard — is characteristically late nineteenth-century British, the mango chutney arriving through the India trade and mushroom ketchup being the older native condiment.