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Stewed Pig's Feet
Place a couple of thin slices of bacon at the bottom of a stewpan, put in the feet with a blade of mace, a few peppercorns, two or three sprigs of thyme, and enough good gravy to moisten them to height, and boil slowly. When quite tender, split each foot lengthwise into halves, and lay them open on a hot dish; strain their cooking liquor into a small saucepan, mix with it a small lump of butter that has been kneaded with flour, and the bacon from the stewpan, first cutting it up into small pieces. Let the sauce simmer at the edge of the fire for two or three minutes, then pour it over the feet, garnish them with small croutons of bread that have been nicely browned in butter, and serve.
Stuffed Pig's Feet, Perigueux To one and one-half pounds of boned turkey forcemeat, add two minced truffles and one-half wineglass of Madeira wine, and mix well together in a bowl. Shred six pieces of crepinette (a skin found in the stomach of the pig) the size of the hand on a table, lay on each one a piece of forcemeat the size of an egg, spread it well, and lay one-half of a boned pig's foot on top. Cover with another light layer of forcemeat, and finish each with three thin slices of truffles. Cover the crepinettes so that they get the form of envelopes, fold them up and dip them one after the other in beaten egg, then in breadcrumbs, and cook in a sautepan with two ounces of clarified butter. Place a heavy weight on top of the feet, cook on a slow fire for twelve minutes on each side, and serve with one-half pint of hot perigueux sauce on the dish, and the pig's feet on the top; or they may be served with hot Madeira sauce. Broiled Fillets or Tenderloins of Pork Prepare, trimming well, a dozen fillets of pork, and dip them in warmed butter, then breadcrumb them all over, and put them on a gridiron over a clear fire, and broil them until done, then arrange them on a dish, and serve with a little poivrade sauce in a sauceboat and any desired vegetables which may be in season.
Fillet of Pork, Hunter's Style Remove the meat from a leg of pork weighing about five pounds and stuff the cavity where the bone has been taken out with well-seasoned pork stuffing, score the skin and lard the upper or thick surface with thick lardoons of pork; place a few slices of bacon fat, carrots, onions and a bunch of sweet herbs in a braising pan and put the meat on top, brown the latter a little and add a little brown stock and vinegar to moisten, cooking until the meat is thoroughly done; then remove the meat and place it on a hot dish to keep it warm; drain the liquor, thicken it with a little dissolved gelatine, adding coloring if required, and reduce the liquor by boiling and afterward pour it over the meat, and serve very hot.
Four pork preparations from the Waldorf's kitchen, run together as one entry. The first is the simplest and the others build on it; all assume a brigade with stock, forcemeat and sauces already on hand.
- Buy the feet split, or split them yourselfTrotters are sold fresh or brined; use fresh here, since the recipe adds its own seasoning. Ask the butcher to halve them lengthwise if you would rather not do it with a cleaver after cooking, though the recipe's method of cooking whole and splitting hot keeps them from falling apart in the pot.
- "Boil slowly" means barely bubblingThree to four hours at a bare simmer, or until a skewer slips through the skin with no resistance. A hard boil shreds the collagen jacket and the feet come out of the pan in pieces. Pressure cooker, about 45 minutes at high pressure, works if you accept less control.
- Good gravyIn cookbooks of this period 'gravy' generally means unthickened meat stock rather than the thickened sauce the word signals today. Veal or pork stock is right; chicken stock will do. 'To moisten them to height' suggests liquid coming up to the height of the feet rather than deeply covering them.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy aril that encloses the nutmeg seed, dried and sold as blades. One blade is roughly a quarter to a half teaspoon of ground mace; if substituting ground, add it near the end rather than the start, since ground spice will cloud the liquor over a long simmer.
- Butter kneaded with flourBeurre manie, worked to a paste in roughly equal weights, whisked into the strained liquor off the heat and then simmered. About a tablespoon each of butter and flour will lightly bind a cup of liquid; twice that gives a distinctly thicker sauce. Reduce the strained liquor first if it tastes thin; thickening a weak stock only gives you thick weak stock.
- Crepinette is caul fatThe book's parenthesis is loosely worded rather than plainly wrong: caul is the lacy fatty membrane (the omentum) that hangs from the pig's stomach and drapes the abdominal organs. Butchers and online suppliers sell it frozen; soak it in cool salted water to loosen, and handle it wet or it tears.
- Turkey forcemeat and trufflesA pound and a half of raw turkey thigh ground with fat and seasoning, or use a good fine-textured pork and veal forcemeat. Fresh black truffle is the intention; preserved truffle in the tin is the practical substitute, and truffle oil is not.
- Poivrade, Périgueux, MadeiraAll three are derivatives of a classic brown sauce base. Périgueux is demi-glace with Madeira and chopped truffle; poivrade is a peppery vinegar-and-mirepoix reduction. Without a stock kitchen behind you, these are the real work of the dish.
- Pork temperatureThe leg is cooked "thoroughly done" in the original, which meant well past dry. Current practice takes whole cuts of pork to 145F with a rest; a stuffed leg should reach 160F at the centre of the stuffing since it contains raw forcemeat.
- YieldTwo trotters per person for the stew as a course on its own; the stuffed version is one wrapped half-foot each. The five-pound stuffed leg serves eight to ten.
Pig's feet were the cheap end of the animal everywhere in the nineteenth century, and the Waldorf's kitchen is doing what French cooking had long done with them: taking a poor cut and burying it in truffle, Madeira and demi-glace until it can sit on a hotel menu. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, compiled this book in 1896 from the classical French repertoire the hotel worked in, and the second recipe here is essentially the dish generally traced to Sainte-Menehould in the Champagne region — trotters cooked long enough to soften the small bones, then crumbed and browned — with a Périgord truffle stuffing laid over it. The name Périgueux, attached to any brown sauce carrying chopped truffle, points to the Périgord region of southwestern France where the black truffle trade was centred. That an American hotel expected its cooks to keep caul fat, truffles and three brown sauce derivatives to hand says a good deal about the scale of the Waldorf's kitchen at the turn of the century.