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Pig's Pettitoes, Stewed
Cleanse a set of pettitoes thoroughly, and put them into a stewpan, with the heart, the liver, a thin slice of bacon, six or eight peppercorns, a sprig of thyme, half a blade of mace, and as much broth or water as will cover the whole. Simmer gently for a quarter of an hour, then take out the heart and the liver, and mince them finely. Leave the feet until they are tender--they will require to be simmered from twenty to thirty minutes, counting from the time when they first reach the boiling-point. When the feet are done enough, put the mince back into the stewpan, with a little pepper and salt, a piece of butter rolled in flour, and a table-spoonful of cream. Shake the saucepan over the fire for five or six minutes. Serve the mince in the sauce on a hot dish, split the feet, lay them upon the mince, and garnish with toasted sippets. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A dish of pig's trotters served on a mince of the heart and liver, from the era when a whole suckling pig arrived in the kitchen with its pluck attached. The timings only make sense if you know which animal the feet came from.
- The timing is the hingeTwenty to thirty minutes will tenderise the feet of a suckling pig, which is what the recipe assumes. Trotters from a mature pig, which is all a butcher will sell you now, need two and a half to three hours of bare simmering before the skin and connective tissue give way. Cook them until a knife slides through the thick part with no resistance.
- Sourcing the partsA "set of pettitoes" is four feet. Heart and liver from a suckling pig are rarely available commercially; ordinary pork heart and liver are, from a butcher who breaks down whole animals. Use roughly 4 oz of each for four trotters.
- Cook the offal separatelyIf you are simmering trotters for three hours, the heart and liver cannot go in at the start. Poach them on their own for 15 minutes in some of the trotter liquor, lift out and mince, then set aside until the feet are done.
- Blade of maceMace is the dried aril that encases the nutmeg seed; a "blade" is one dried piece of it. Half a blade is a modest amount — about an eighth of a teaspoon of ground mace.
- Butter rolled in flourBeurre mani\ e, kneaded in equal parts by weight "E about 1 tablespoon of each will thicken the sauce here. Whisk it in off the boil and let the sauce barely bubble for a few minutes to cook out the raw flour.
- SippetsTriangles or small fingers of toasted or fried bread, arranged round the edge of the dish. Fried in a little of the pork fat they are better than dry toast, and they earn their place by soaking up a sauce that is otherwise very rich.
- Splitting the feetSplit them lengthways with a heavy knife once they are cooked and have cooled slightly, not before; hot from the pan they are apt to collapse.
- YieldThe original says two or three persons. With four modern trotters and the offal mince it will serve two as a main course, or four as a first course with plenty of bread.
"Pettitoes" is often traced to the Old French petite oye, the giblets and trimmings of a goose, which passed into English as a word for the small edible odds and ends of any animal before narrowing, by folk association with "petty toes", to the feet specifically. That older sense survives in this recipe, which treats the feet and the pluck as a single dish. Shakespeare uses the word in The Winter's Tale, and by the eighteenth century it appears routinely in English cookery books as a suckling-pig dish, the pettitoes being what the cook was left with after the pig itself went to the spit. Cassell's, compiling in the late Victorian period for households that still bought meat in large and awkward pieces, keeps it in as a matter of thrift: nothing off the animal is wasted, and the mince stretches a small amount of meat with butter, flour and a spoonful of cream.