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To Fry Calves' Feet
455. Remove while warm the bones, two feet previously boiled till tender. When cold and firm cut them into pieces of a suitable size and shape. Strew them with pepper and salt, and dip them in egg and crumbs; then fry them of a nice brown, or instead of the egg and crumbs cover them with a nice light batter like a small fritter, each one the size of a poached egg. Serve on a napkin, or garnish with pickles.
A Victorian way of using up the trotters left after making stock or jelly: the boiled feet are boned while hot, chilled until the natural gelatine sets them firm, then cut and fried. Nothing here is difficult, but the chilling step is what makes the dish possible at all.
- The hinge: bone them warm, chill them hardThe bones slip out easily while the feet are hot and are almost impossible to remove once cool. After boning, press the meat and skin into a shallow dish, weight it lightly, and refrigerate several hours until the gelatine has set solid; only then will it cut into clean pieces that hold together in the fryer.
- Sourcing the feetCalves' feet are a special order from a butcher and often come split lengthwise, cleaned and scalded. Pig's trotters behave the same way and are far easier to find. Two calves' feet give roughly enough for four as a first course.
- "Boiled till tender"Expect 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, longer if the feet are large. The meat should pull from the bone with no resistance. The cooking liquid sets to a stiff jelly when cold and is worth keeping for aspic or for enriching a sauce.
- Frying temperatureDeep fry at 350-360F. Gelatine-rich pieces soften quickly if the fat is cool, so bring the oil back up to temperature between batches and fry only a few at a time.
- Egg and crumbs, or batterFor the crumbed version, flour the pieces lightly first so the egg has something to grip; fresh and dried crumbs colour differently, so watch them. The batter alternative is a plain flour-and-egg frying batter, and "the size of a poached egg" describes the battered fritters, about two inches across.
- Serving on a napkinA folded linen napkin on the serving dish was a common Victorian presentation for fried dishes, and it absorbed some of the fat. A rack or paper does the same job, and the napkin is purely a matter of taste now.
- Seasoning and garnishThe pepper and salt go on the meat before breading, not after, since the coating seals it. Sharp pickles, cornichons, or a mustard sauce cut the richness, which is considerable.
Calves' feet were a staple of nineteenth-century British kitchens less for their meat than for their gelatine: calf's-foot jelly was a standard invalid food and a base for moulded sweet jellies before commercial gelatine sheets and powders became cheap and reliable. Once the feet had given up their jelly, or when a household simply had trotters to hand, frugality encouraged using the remaining meat and skin, and frying in egg and crumbs was one common answer. The dish belongs to the same family as tripe, brawn and cowheel pie, all of them ways of making the cheapest parts of the animal palatable. Its decline from British tables in the twentieth century broadly coincides with the arrival of packaged gelatine, which weakened the household reason for buying feet in the first place.