Ragout Souse
Split four feet once, fry with one or two dozen large oysters, a light brown. Lay them in a stewpan over the liquor from the oysters, or some beef or veal gravy; add one large spoonful butter rolled in flour, one dozen allspice, beaten, one glass red wine, one glass walnut catsup, and pepper. Stew gently until dinner, skimming off any grease. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs. Mace or cloves may be used instead of allspice.-Mrs. B.
A dish built on souse — pig's feet already cooked and pickled — reheated in a wine-and-catsup gravy. Most of the work is in sourcing and in restraint with the oysters.
- What souse isSouse is pig's feet (sometimes ears and snout) simmered until tender and then held in spiced vinegar brine. The four feet here are already cooked; nothing in this recipe brings raw pork to temperature. If you start with raw trotters they need two to three hours of simmering before they come anywhere near this pan.
- The hinge: the oystersFrying the oysters and then stewing them "until dinner" will give you rubber. Fry them briefly to colour, lift them out, build and simmer the sauce with the feet, and return the oysters for the last two or three minutes only. Their liquor goes in at the start.
- A glassA wine glass in this period is roughly 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. Two glasses total — wine and walnut catsup — gives about half a cup of liquid, which is right for a sauce this size.
- Walnut catsupNot tomato ketchup: a thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts, vinegar, anchovy and spice, closer to Worcestershire sauce. Still sold by British specialty grocers; a mix of Worcestershire with a splash of mushroom ketchup is a common stand-in.
- Butter rolled in flourBeurre manié — equal parts soft butter and flour kneaded together, about a tablespoon of each here. Whisk it in gradually once the liquid is hot and let it cook a few minutes so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Allspice, beatenBeaten means crushed in a mortar, not powdered. A dozen berries is roughly one to two teaspoons of coarsely cracked allspice; ground allspice will muddy the sauce, so use rather less if that is what you have.
- Stew gently until dinnerThe instruction assumes a pot held at low heat at the side of the fire or stove. Thirty to forty-five minutes at a bare simmer is enough to marry the sauce and warm the feet through; longer and the gelatin renders the whole thing gluey.
- Skimming and seasoningPig's feet throw a good deal of fat and the souse brine carries salt into the pan. Skim as directed, and taste before adding any salt at all — the catsup contributes more.
- YieldFour feet and a dozen or two oysters will serve four as a main course with rice or bread. The recipe specifies only a garnish of hard-boiled eggs; quartered or sliced round the dish is the usual treatment.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in the late 1870s, gathers contributions from named and initialled Virginia housewives — hence "Mrs. B." Souse itself was a thrift dish: after hog-killing, the feet and head were too gelatinous to roast and too valuable to waste, so they were boiled soft and kept under spiced vinegar, where they lasted for weeks in a cold larder. Turning that pickled larder staple into a "ragout" with wine, oysters and walnut catsup is the older English kitchen showing through, the same impulse that produced hashes and made-dishes out of cold cooked meat. Walnut catsup and the pairing of oysters with pork both point back to eighteenth-century English cookery, and oysters were cheap and abundant on the Chesapeake.