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SHEEP'S TROTTERS (a la Poulette)
Take twelve feet, already scalded and cleaned. Boil them quickly for a quarter of an hour, then remove the large bone from each by holding the foot in the left hand and giving the bone a sharp jerk with the right. Shred four ounces of suet, and put it into a saucepan with two sliced onions, a scraped carrot, a sprig of thyme, and a bay-leaf. Stir these ingredients over a brisk fire for five minutes, then beat in two table-spoonfuls of flour, and when this is smooth add gradually five pints of water or stock. Stir the liquor till it boils, put in the feet, and let them simmer till quite tender. Take them up, and drain them on a sieve. Put four ounces of butter on a plate, and work smoothly into it with the point of a knife a tea-spoonful of flour, a tea-spoonful of salt, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of pepper, and a little grated nutmeg. Heat a gill of milk in a saucepan. Stir the butter in this till it is melted, and add the yolks of two eggs which have been beaten up with a cupful of milk or cream. Stir the sauce over the fire, and as it thickens add a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. It must on no account boil after the eggs are added. Heat the trotters in the sauce, put them on a dish, pour the sauce over, and serve. Garnish the dish with fried sippets. If liked, a few mushrooms or a little chopped parsley can be put into the sauce. Time to boil the trotters, three hours and a half. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A blanquette in miniature: feet poached in a suet-based velouté, then finished in a lemon-and-egg-yolk sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but two points decide whether it works — the sauce must not boil, and the feet must be genuinely tender before they meet it.
- The sauce must never boilOnce the two yolks go in, hold the pan below a simmer — around 180F is the working range. A boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into curds and thin liquor with no way back.
- Sourcing the feet"Already scalded and cleaned" means the hair and hoof-horn are off and the feet have been blanched. Butchers rarely stock sheep's trotters now; halal and Caribbean butchers are the reliable source, and they may need ordering. Pig's trotters, more widely available, are fattier and much more gelatinous — a different dish.
- A gillA quarter of a pint: 5 imperial fluid ounces, roughly 150 ml, a little over half a US cup. The "cupful" of milk or cream that follows is not a standard measure; treat it as about 8 fl oz and thin the sauce afterwards if it sets too heavy.
- SuetShredded beef suet, sold in packets in Britain and from butchers elsewhere. Four ounces to two tablespoons of flour is a very fat-heavy roux by modern standards; butter or a lighter hand with the suet gives a cleaner sauce, and any fat that rises during the long simmer should be skimmed.
- Removing the boneThe sharp jerk after fifteen minutes works because the connective tissue has begun to soften but the foot still holds together. If it resists, boil another five minutes rather than forcing it — a shattered bone is far harder to find later.
- Three and a half hoursThat is not an exaggeration. Trotters are collagen and cartilage; they need long, low cooking to turn gelatinous and yielding. Test by pressing the fleshy part — it should give completely. Undercooked trotter is rubbery and unpleasant.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or dripping, arranged round the dish. They are structural as much as decorative: the sauce is rich and needs something dry alongside.
- Yield and costTwelve feet serve four or five as the book says, but as a main course expect three. The book gives the probable cost as 2s. 6d.
À la poulette is one of the standard French sauce finishes — a light velouté enriched with egg yolks and sharpened with lemon, the same liaison that defines a blanquette de veau — and it was applied above all to sweetbreads, mussels, tripe and feet. Pieds de mouton à la poulette appears in nineteenth-century French cookery, and the English kitchen took it up with the price attached. That price is the point of the recipe. A sheep yields four feet, worth almost nothing on their own, and the labour of scalding, cleaning and a three-and-a-half-hour simmer turned them into a dish that could be sauced and garnished and set on a table. Offal cookery of this kind faded in Britain across the twentieth century as meat grew cheaper relative to time, and trotters survive now mostly in the kitchens that never abandoned them.