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Stewed Sheep's Tongues
Put two or three sheep's tongues into a saucepan with water and boil them until the skin can easily be removed, which will take about two hours. Skin, cut them lengthwise into halves and put them in a saucepan with a little parsley, chopped shallot, mushrooms, butter, pepper and salt, and pour over sufficient gravy to moisten. Place the saucepan on the fire and cook gently until the tongues are tender. Put them on a dish, strain the gravy over them, and serve.
Basserole of Sheep's Trotters with Rice Blanch a number of small sheep's trotters, remove the long bone and split each foot in two lengthwise. Put two chopped onions, a carrot, a turnip, three bay leaves, a small bunch of thyme, and a few cloves into a stewpan with a little dripping or chopped suet, and fry them over a slow fire for about ten minutes, then sift in two tablespoonfuls of flour, mix it well, pour in by degrees two quarts of white stock, add the feet with a small lump of salt, and allow the whole to simmer by the side of the fire until quite tender, then drain them on a cloth. Pour one quart of white sauce and one pint of the strained cooking liquor of the feet into a saucepan and boil it quickly until reduced to a thick cream, then put in the feet with about twenty button mushrooms and two or three tablespoonfuls of chopped parsley, season with pepper and salt and let them simmer for a few minutes. Beat the yolks of two eggs with one teacupful of cream, stir them in with the above mixture, not allowing them to boil after the eggs are added; squeeze the juice of half a lemon into this, turn it into a casserole, and serve.
Sheep's Trotters, Poulette Put about a dozen sheep's trotters into water the day before they are required. Split the hoof in two, take out the woolly tuft, trim them neatly, tie them together in fours, scald and put them into a saucepan with two or three carrots, turnips and onions, peeled but left whole, and season with cloves, peppercorns and a bunch of parsley and sweet herbs. Mix one tablespoonful of flour with a little water, pour it into the saucepan, cover the feet with cold water, stand the saucepan over a moderate fire and let the water boil for six hours. Take out the feet, drain them, remove the shank bone, place the feet in an empty saucepan and leave them with the cover on. Fry a large chopped onion in butter with one-half teacupful of flour until nicely browned. Put one quart of broth into another saucepan and drop in a bunch of parsley and a few mushroom trimmings; stir in the flour and onions and continue stirring over the fire until the broth boils; then move it to the side and let it simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. Skim it clear of fat and pass it through a conical-shaped strainer into the saucepan containing the feet; then add two ounces of button mushrooms, peeled and trimmed, and a pinch of pepper. Beat the yolks of three eggs with a little milk and in twenty minutes' time stir them into the broth, with five or six small lumps of butter, a little lemon juice and one teaspoonful of chopped parsley. When cooked sufficiently arrange the feet upon a dish, garnish with croutons of fried bread; they are then ready to be served.
Sheep's Trotters, Vinaigrette Trim a dozen sheep's trotters, split their hoofs and remove the tuft which is found between the toes; tie them together in fours, place them in a saucepan with cold water and set it over the fire until the water boils; then remove the feet, rinse them in a little cold water, put them in the saucepan with fresh water, add two or three carrots and turnips, one large onion stuck with four cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, a few sprigs of parsley and some peppercorns and salt, and let them simmer by the side of the fire for about five hours. When done remove the feet, untie them, take out the shank bones carefully so as not to tear the flesh, lay the flesh on a plate, sprinkle over some chopped parsley, pepper and salt and let them cool. Beat the yolks of three eggs with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, dip the feet into it, roll them in finely-grated breadcrumbs and broil them in front of a clear fire, turning till browned on both sides. Baste with a little butter, and serve with either tartar or mayonnaise sauce.
Pork. Bacon and Eggs The rashers of bacon, cut from the back, must be trimmed of all bone, rind and smoked part, and put into a hot fryingpan very clean. Cook until nicely browned, but without burning, taking care that the fat does not "catch." When the bacon is laid on a dish, the shells of the eggs must be carefully broken so as not to break the yolks, each being broken separately and kept from one another. As each egg is added to the fryingpan, the white should be allowed to set before adding another. Baste them with hot fat, trim and put one on each piece of bacon. Mashed potatoes may be served around the sides of the dish if desired.
A run of offal cookery from the Waldorf kitchen: one short tongue recipe followed by three treatments of sheep's feet and a note on bacon and eggs. Nearly all of it still works, but the raw materials now take a phone call to a butcher rather than a trip to the market stall.
- The tongues themselvesLamb tongues run 3-4 oz each, so two or three feed one or two people at most; scale up to eight or ten for four diners. They are sold frozen by halal and Latin butchers and by most whole-animal suppliers.
- Peel while hotThe two-hour boil is only there to loosen the skin. Lift each tongue out and strip the membrane while it is still too hot to hold comfortably — once it cools the skin grips and comes away in shreds, taking meat with it.
- "Gravy" here means stockIn a professional kitchen of this period gravy is the brown reduced meat stock kept on the stove, not a thickened sauce. Use a well-flavoured brown veal or beef stock, just enough to come partway up the split tongues.
- "Basserole" is a misprintThe second heading should read Casserole of Sheep's Trotters with Rice, and the casserole is the serving vessel — a deep earthenware dish — not a baked preparation. The rice of the title never appears in the method; serve plain boiled rice alongside.
- Trotters need a full dayReal sheep's feet arrive with hoof, hair and the woolly tuft between the toes still in place. Scalding and scraping, plus the overnight soak the poulette recipe specifies, are not optional steps but the whole of the cleaning. Many butchers will now sell them already scalded and split.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant the cooler edge of the plate, a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil; on a modern burner that is the lowest setting. Note that the poulette recipe itself directs a moderate fire and a six-hour boil.
- The egg liaison is the hingeIn both the casserole and the poulette, yolks beaten with cream or milk go in at the end and the sauce must not return to a boil. Temper a ladle of hot liquid into the yolks first, stir them back off the heat, and hold the sauce below 180F or it will curdle into scrambled threads.
- Broiling "in front of a clear fire"For the vinaigrette version this means an overhead broiler at high heat, or a very hot grill pan. The crumbed feet are already fully cooked and cold — you are only browning the coating, three or four minutes a side.
- White stock and white sauceWhite stock is an unroasted veal or poultry stock; the quart of white sauce is most likely a velouté built on the same stock rather than a milk bechamel, though the recipe does not say. Reducing it with a pint of the trotter liquor gives the natural gelatine that makes the dish set richly on the plate.
- Bacon and eggsThe rashers are cut from the back — English-style back bacon, leaner and broader than American streaky. Trimming off the smoked part is what the recipe directs; skip it if you like the smoke.
Sheep's tongues and trotters were cheap protein that took skill rather than money, and a hotel kitchen of Oscar Tschirky's era was expected to handle both ends of the animal with equal seriousness. The Waldorf's grand dining room sold terrapin and canvasback, and the book records these humbler dishes without apology. The poulette treatment — a white sauce finished with egg yolks, butter and lemon — is straight French classical practice, and it appears in Escoffier and his predecessors applied to everything from mussels to calf's head; its job is to give bland, gelatinous meat some acidity and richness. Sheep's trotters were also a street food in Britain and across the eastern Mediterranean, sold boiled from barrows. The detailed cleaning instructions here reflect that the cook was expected to buy the feet raw and unprepared. These cuts have largely disappeared from American menus, a shift usually attributed to changes in retail butchery rather than to taste.