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Fried Pigs' Feet
Wipe, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain.
Four lines of instruction that assume you have already read the entry above them in the book. Everything that matters here happens before the breading.
- The feet must be cooked firstThis entry depends on the preceding boiled pigs' feet instructions: the feet are simmered for several hours until the meat is tender and the connective tissue has softened, then cooled and split. Raw trotters breaded and dropped in fat will scorch outside and remain inedible inside.
- Dry them thoroughlyBoiled feet come out wet and gelatinous, and wet surfaces will not hold crumbs. Chill the split halves until firm, then pat dry before seasoning; cold feet also hold their shape in the fat instead of sliding apart.
- "Crumbs, egg, and crumbs"The standard Farmer breading order: a first light coat of dry crumbs gives the beaten egg something to grip, then a second coat of crumbs sets the crust. The egg is usually beaten with a tablespoon of cold water. Fine dry bread crumbs, not the coarse panko sort, give the smooth shell the period expected.
- Deep fat means 375FDeep fat -- the book gives no thermometer reading; it tests fat by browning a cube of bread, the shorter times being for already-cooked mixtures. The feet are cooked, so the frying is purely about colour and crispness and wants only a few minutes.
- Salt and pepper onlyFannie Farmer seasons plainly, but the boiling liquid is where flavour actually enters a trotter. Bay, onion, peppercorns and a splash of vinegar in the simmering water do more than anything applied at the breading stage.
- SourcingPigs' feet are still sold at most butcher counters and in Latin, Chinese and Southern markets, usually split and sometimes brine-cured. If you buy cured feet, soak them before boiling or the finished dish will be very salty.
- Yield and servingServing -- the recipe gives no yield. A sharp accompaniment, such as made mustard or vinegar, suits the richness of the gelatin.
Pigs' feet belong to the thrift end of the nineteenth-century pork barrel, the part of the animal that came free or nearly so and repaid long slow cooking with gelatin rather than meat. Boiling them soft and then crumbing and frying them was the standard way to make an obviously cheap cut look like a course. Fannie Farmer's brevity here is characteristic of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, though this exact wording may belong to a later revision rather than the 1896 edition. Pickled and fried trotters remained ordinary saloon and lunch-counter food in American cities well into the twentieth century before slipping out of general use.