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Souse, or Pig's Feet
Clean the feet carefully, and pour over them hot water sufficient to cover. Boil slowly until the meat will separate from the bones; then take them up carefully on a skimmer, and place them in a stone jar, taking out the largest bones. Set the water aside in a cool place to be used later.
Allow one quart of strong vinegar to four good-sized feet and uppers (which are always sold with the feet). Place the vinegar on the fire, adding four bay leaves; one tablespoon of whole cloves; one tablespoon of broken cinnamon; one-fourth of a teacup of salt; two teaspoons of pepper; one-half onion, cut in eighths; one blade of mace.
Steep all these slowly in the vinegar for forty-five minutes, being careful that the vinegar does not boil rapidly at any time. Remove from the water in which the feet were boiled all the fat, which by this time will have formed in a cake on the top, and save it for cooking purposes. Add one quart of the water to the vinegar unless the latter is not very strong, in which case less water must be added, so that the vinegar will not become too much diluted. Strain the liquid through a sieve to remove the spice, etc., and pour it over the meat in the jar, helping it through the meat with a knife and fork, until the whole is thoroughly mixed together. Set the jar in a cold place for two days, when the souse will be ready for use.
A straightforward cold-pickled pork dish that hinges on two things: cooking the feet long enough that the collagen gives way, and keeping the vinegar strong enough to do its job. Most of the work is waiting.
- Buying the feetAsk a butcher for fresh (not smoked or already cured) feet, split lengthwise, with the hair and dew claws removed. The "uppers" the book mentions are the lower leg sections above the trotter, sold attached or alongside; hocks are the usual modern equivalent.
- How long is "until the meat will separate from the bones"Expect three to four hours at a bare simmer for four feet. A rolling boil shreds the skin and clouds the broth; hold it just below a bubble. The meat should slide from the bone under light pressure.
- Vinegar strength"Strong vinegar" at the time meant something above the ordinary table sort. Supermarket white or cider vinegar is standardised at about 5 percent acidity, which is not strong by that measure, so add little or none of the reserved pork water. Diluting a quart of 5 percent vinegar with a quart of broth halves the acidity and leaves you with a mild marinade rather than a pickle.
- Use a nonreactive potSteeping a quart of vinegar and whole spices in aluminium, untinned copper or bare cast iron will pull metal into the liquid and turn it grey and harsh. Stainless steel or enamel only.
- Spice notesA blade of mace is one piece of the lacy aril from around a nutmeg; a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes. "Broken cinnamon" means a stick snapped into pieces, not powder, which would leave the liquid muddy.
- The teacupA teacup in this period runs about three-quarters of a modern cup, so one-fourth of a teacup of salt is roughly three tablespoons. Given the volume of liquid, this is seasoning rather than a cure.
- The stone jarA glazed stoneware crock. Any nonreactive vessel works: glass, food-grade plastic, stainless. Avoid old decorative crockery of unknown glaze.
- Storage is the real limitThis is a refrigerator pickle, not a shelf-stable preserve. The "cold place" of a 1900 cellar or larder should be read as the refrigerator, and the souse eaten within about five days. Even at full vinegar strength, cooked pork held at room temperature is not safe.
- Saving the fatThe cake that rises on the cooled broth is clean pork fat. Lift it off, scrape the jelly from the underside, and render it briefly over low heat to drive off water before storing it.
- ServingThe recipe gives no yield; four feet and their uppers will feed several people as a cold dish. Souse is eaten cold, sliced from the jar, or drained and browned in a little of its own fat; mustard and bread are common accompaniments.
"Souse" comes from an Old French word borrowed from Germanic roots meaning pickle or brine, and in English it was applied both to pickled parts of the pig — feet, ears, snout — and to the pickling liquid itself. It belongs to the hog-killing economy that shaped American farm cooking well into the twentieth century: after the hams and shoulders were smoked and the middlings salted, the extremities were boiled down, and the natural gelatin in the feet meant nothing was wasted. Related preparations run from Pennsylvania Dutch souse and head cheese to the Caribbean souse of pig's feet dressed with lime and cucumber. Its appearance in the Butterick book, a general household manual issued by a pattern company for a broad domestic readership, is a reminder that even city cooks around 1900 were expected to handle whole cuts and offal as a matter of thrift rather than adventure.