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Calves' Feet Dressed as Terrapins
Boil eight feet until the meat leaves the bones, then remove them. Put them in a pan with one-half pint of the rich gravy in which they are boiled, and add two large spoonfuls butter.
Rub the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs with a small teaspoonful mustard, a very little cayenne, and salt to the taste.
When well mixed with the egg, stir all together into the feet or gravy. Let it simmer ten minutes, and just before dishing add two wineglasses of good cooking wine and simmer again before serving.--Mrs. M. E. L. W.
A mock terrapin, built on the gelatin-rich broth of calves' feet and finished like the real thing with hard-boiled egg yolk and wine. Nothing here is difficult, but the timings and the vessel names need translating.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmer once the wine is inThe body of this sauce comes from the gelatin in the feet, with butter and mashed yolk carrying the richness; boiled hard, the butter breaks and the sauce goes thin and greasy. Hold everything at a bare shiver, and after the wine goes in give it two or three minutes only, not a rolling boil.
- Calves' feetOrder them from a butcher or a halal or Latin market; they are rarely on display. Eight feet is a large quantity — figure on eight to ten servings. Four feet plus about half the other quantities makes a more manageable dish, and pig's feet behave the same way if veal is unavailable.
- "Boil until the meat leaves the bones"That is three to four hours at a slow simmer, not a boil. Start them in cold water barely covering and skim the scum in the first fifteen minutes; an onion, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns will improve the liquid, though the receipt itself names no aromatics.
- "The rich gravy in which they are boiled"No roux is meant. It is the cooking liquid itself, glossy with natural gelatin; the receipt asks only for half a pint of it, though reducing it will strengthen the body. Strain it, let it settle, and lift the fat off the top or the finished dish will be greasy.
- Spoonfuls and wineglassesA "large spoonful" here is a tablespoon, so about 2 tablespoons of butter total. A wineglass in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is roughly 2 fluid ounces, making two glasses about half a cup.
- "Good cooking wine"In a Virginia kitchen this would most likely have been sherry or Madeira, and either suits. Avoid anything sold as "cooking wine" today, which is salted and will overwhelm the cayenne and mustard.
- Cutting the meatPull the meat and skin from the bones while warm and cut it into rough half-inch pieces. Left in large lumps the gelatinous skin is unpleasant to eat; small pieces are what makes it read as terrapin.
- ServingServe very hot in shallow bowls with toast points or plain boiled rice, and taste again for salt at the end — the reduction concentrates whatever went into the stockpot.
Diamondback terrapin was a luxury of the Chesapeake table through the nineteenth century, stewed with butter, egg yolk and Madeira and priced accordingly; by the later nineteenth century it is often said that heavy harvesting had made it expensive enough that cookbooks of the region carried imitations alongside the genuine article. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (generally dated 1878, with later printings), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives — hence the initials at the end of the receipt — includes several such economies. The substitution works because what people prized in terrapin was less the flavor of the meat than the texture: the unctuous, lip-sticking body that long-boiled feet supply in abundance, dressed with the same seasonings. Calves' feet were a familiar larder item in households that made their own jelly or blancmange, so this recipe uses an ingredient likely already on hand to stand in for one that had become a delicacy. Terrapin is now protected or restricted in much of its range, and the imitation is the only version most cooks will meet.