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Sheep's Trotters, Pate Of
Take a coarse earthen pate-dish which has a closely-fitting cover. Procure three sets of sheep's trotters already cleaned and parboiled, and cut each one into three pieces. Boil till tender, and pack them closely in the pate-dish, and to season them, sprinkle between the layers a little pepper, salt, and powdered spice, together with a moderate proportion of minced onion, chopped parsley, powdered thyme, bay-leaves, and cloves. Place the cover on the dish, and in order to prevent the escape of the steam, fasten it down with a coarse paste made of flour and water. Put the pate in a gentle oven for five or six hours, or if it can be done let it be put in a baker's oven after the bread is drawn, and remain there all night. If gently cooked the feet will be reduced to jelly, and will constitute an excellent dish, which may be served hot or cold. If the oven is too much heated, the feet will be burnt up, dry, and good for nothing. Time to bake, five or six hours. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A slow gelatine extraction dressed up as a terrine. Everything depends on keeping the oven low enough that the collagen melts rather than the meat drying out.
- The hinge: gentle heat"A gentle oven" is not defined in the original, but it must be low: conventionally something in the region of 250-300F. Too hot and the feet dry out and scorch instead of melting to jelly, which is precisely the failure the original warns about.
- The baker's ovenPutting the dish in after the bread was drawn meant cooking in falling residual heat overnight, hot at first and dropping steadily. The modern equivalent is the lowest setting your oven holds, or an overnight slow cooker on low.
- Pate-dishNot pastry and not the modern baked terrine. It is a lidded earthenware pot; a small enamelled Dutch oven, a lidded stoneware bean pot or a covered casserole all work.
- The flour-and-water pasteThis is a luting seal, not something to eat. A stiff dough of flour and water rolled into a rope and pressed round the rim, or a double layer of foil crimped tight under the lid, keeps the steam in for the whole five or six hours.
- Sourcing trottersThree sets means twelve feet, cut into thirty-six pieces, which is a great deal for one dish. Sheep's and lambs' feet are sold by halal butchers and some traditional butchers; pig's trotters behave the same way and are far easier to find. Order them scalded and the hooves removed.
- "Already cleaned and parboiled"The butcher's step. If yours come raw, scrub them, blanch for ten minutes in fresh water, drain and rinse away the scum before the real simmer.
- Boil till tenderReckon 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer before packing. They should be soft but still holding to the bone; the oven stage finishes the job and dissolves the connective tissue.
- Seasoning quantitiesNone are given. For twelve feet, roughly two teaspoons salt, a teaspoon of pepper, two onions minced, a good handful of parsley, two teaspoons thyme, three bay leaves and six cloves is a workable starting point. The spice can be mace or allspice.
- ServingSix to eight. Hot, it is soft meat in its own liquor. Cold, it sets firm as a natural brawn and slices; chill it overnight under a light weight and scrape the fat cap off the top before cutting.
Feet were the cheapest part of the carcass and the richest in collagen, which made them the standard household source of gelatine long before packet gelatine was on sale. Sheep's trotters in particular were a byproduct of the wool and mutton trade; the two shillings quoted here is the book's own probable cost for the finished dish, a whole main dish for eight. The technique -- pack, season, seal with a flour paste, cook overnight in the cooling bread oven -- belongs to the era when a domestic or commercial oven's stored heat was too valuable to waste, and it survives in the same form across Europe in dishes from brawn and fromage de tete to the various Balkan and Middle Eastern trotter jellies. The same principle underlies every dish that sets to a jelly without added gelatine.