Cow-Heel, Fried
INGREDIENTS. -2 ox-feet, the yolk of 1 egg, bread-crumbs, parsley, salt and cayenne to taste, boiling butter. AVERAGE Cost, 1s. 3d.
Wash, scald and thoroughly clean the feet, and cut them into pieces about 2 inches long; have ready some fine breadcrumbs, mixed with a little minced parsley, cayenne and salt; dip the pieces of heel into the yolk of egg, sprinkle them with the bread-crumbs, and fry them until of a nice brown in boiling butter.
TIME.- hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note.-Ox-feet may be dressed in various ways, stewed in gravy or plainly boiled and served with melted butter. When plainly boiled, the liquor will answer for making sweet or relishing jellies, and also to give richness to soups or gravies.
INGREDI- Cow-heel Stock (for Jellies; more economical than Calf's Feet). - ENTS for 3 pints of stock. -2 cow-heels, 3 quarts of water. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Procure 2 heels that have only been scalded, and not boiled; split them in two, and remove the fat between the claws; wash them well in warm water, and put them into a saucepan with the above proportion of cold water; bring it gradually to boil, remove all the scum as it rises, and simmer the heels gently from 7 to 8 hours, or until the liquor is reduced one-half; then strain it into a basin, measuring the quantity, and put it in a cool place. Clarify it in the same manner as calf's feet stock, using, with the other ingredients, about 1/2 oz. of isinglass to each quart. This stock should be made the day before it is required for use. Two dozen shank-bones of mutton, boiled for 6 or 7 hours, yield a quart of strong, firm stock.
They should be put on in 2 quarts of water, which should be reduced one-half. Make this also the day before it is required.
TIME.-7 to 8 hours to boil the cow-heels, 6 to 7 hours to boil the shank-bones, SEASONABLE at any time, COWSLIP WINE.
Two recipes run together here: fried cow-heel, and a gelatine stock made from the same cut. Both hinge on the fact that a cow-heel is almost pure connective tissue and needs hours of wet cooking before it is edible.
- The step Beeton assumesThe fried version only works with heels that have already been boiled tender — several hours at a bare simmer, until the gelatinous meat slips from the bones. That heels were often sold already boiled is implied by the second recipe here, which specifies heels "that have only been scalded, and not boiled." Dipping a raw foot in egg and crumbs and frying it for the stated time will give you something inedible.
- The garbled timesBoth "TIME.- hour" and the "oz. of isinglass" have lost their fractions in the original setting. Read the frying time as the few minutes needed to brown crumbed pieces, not an hour; the isinglass quantity is genuinely unrecoverable from this text.
- Cow-heel and ox-footThe same thing — the lower leg and foot of cattle, sold split. Ask a traditional butcher, or look in Caribbean, West African, Chinese and halal shops, where it is a standard item. Allow one foot for two people as a side dish.
- IsinglassA setting agent made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, once sold by the ounce for jellies and for fining beer. Powdered or leaf gelatine has almost wholly displaced it in the kitchen; it is still sold, mainly to brewers and to conservators.
- Clarifying the stockThe "same manner as calf's feet stock" means whisking in egg whites and crushed shells, bringing the stock slowly to a bare boil so the raft rises, then straining through a scalded cloth without pressing. Skip it and the jelly will be cloudy but perfectly usable in soups.
- Why it is made the day beforeThe stock must chill overnight so the fat sets in a solid cap that can be lifted off. Fat left in a jelly stock will cloud it and can taste tallowy.
- Boiling butterButter hot enough to fry will be at the point where the milk solids brown, and it burns quickly at crumb-frying temperature. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, gives the same flavour with more margin.
- SeasoningCow-heel is bland and very rich. The parsley, salt and cayenne in the crumb are the whole of the flavour, so season the crumbs more assertively than you would think, and serve with something sharp — vinegar, mustard, or a caper sauce.
Cow-heel was one of the cheapest sources of animal protein in nineteenth-century Britain, and Beeton prices two feet at one shillng and threepence. It belonged to the same trade as tripe: boiled by specialist dressers and sold ready to reheat, it was a staple of Lancashire and Yorkshire market stalls, where tripe and cow-heel shops survived into living memory. The second half of the entry explains its other use — before commercial gelatine was cheap, every clear jelly, blancmange and invalid's broth depended on gelatine boiled out of feet and shank bones at home, and calf's foot jelly was the standard restorative for the sick. Beeton's point in recommending cow-heel over calf's feet is purely economic: it is the same gelatine from a larger, less valuable animal. The rise of packaged gelatine in the later nineteenth century made these long boilings unnecessary, though the decline of such cuts on the domestic table was a slower shift, belonging largely to the twentieth century.