No. 1660

Sheep's Trotters a la Vinaigrette

Pieds de Mouton a la Vinaigrette

Should they have to be prepared at home they would need scalding and scraping with a knife in order to remove all the hairs; cut the soles from the hoofs so as to suppress a part of the woolly tuft found thereon; cut the ends of the ergots, tie the feet, four of them together, and blanch until they boil; then drain and refresh, place them in a soup-pot, covering them over with cold water, adding salt, pepper, spices, a garnished bunch of parsley (No. 123), onions, carrots and one ounce of flour diluted in cold water. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover the vessel and cook the feet for five hours, when done take out the shank bone which easily detaches without the slightest effort. Just when ready to serve untie and drain; remove the leg bone and wipe the feet on a cloth; dress them on a hot dish with a napkin under, and surround with green parsley leaves. Serve a vinaigrette sauce (No. 634) separately.

LAMB (Agneau).

← No. 1659 Sheep's Trotters a la Poulette Mutton No. 1661 Baron of Yearling Lamb a la de Rivas →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a butcher's yard and a brigade of cooks; the method itself is sound and translates directly to a modern range. The essential point is the flour-thickened cooking liquid.

The flour is not a mistakeAn ounce of flour slaked in cold water turns the cooking liquid into a blanc, a cloudy bath that shields the feet from air and keeps them pale rather than grey. Whisk it into cold water before the pot goes on the heat or it will lump.
ErgotsThe dewclaws — the two small vestigial hooves above the back of the foot. Trim them flush; they carry horn and hair that will not soften.
SourcingTrotters often come from the butcher already scalded and scraped, which can remove the whole first paragraph. Halal and Caribbean butchers are worth trying; order ahead. Buy them whole if you can, since the presentation depends on the foot holding its shape.
TyingFour feet bound together with kitchen twine keeps them from splaying and breaking up over five hours. Truss them loosely enough that liquid circulates.
The five hoursNot padding. Trotters are almost entirely skin, tendon and cartilage, and they need long, bare-simmering time for the collagen to turn to gelatin. Held at a full boil they shred; hold the pot just trembling. A pressure cooker will shorten this considerably, though the feet emerge softer and less intact.
BoningThe shank bone should slide free when the feet are cooked — that is the doneness test. If it resists, they need longer.
Napkin serviceA folded linen napkin laid on the hot platter absorbs the liquid that continues to weep from the feet, so the vinaigrette is not diluted. Purely practical, and still worth doing.
The sauceRanhofer sends his vinaigrette (No. 634) separately; a herbed oil-and-vinegar dressing of that kind is sharp enough to cut the gelatin. Any well-made herbed vinaigrette with mustard and shallot serves the same purpose. Send it separately and at room temperature.
YieldThe recipe gives no portion count; one or two feet a person as a first course is a reasonable guess. The dish must be served genuinely hot — gelatin sets fast, and lukewarm trotters turn sticky and unpleasant on the plate.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean (1894) from three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its coverage of offal is a straightforward inheritance from the French kitchens he trained in, where a sheep's foot was cheap, gelatinous and considered worth the labor. Trotters had a particular reputation in nineteenth-century cooking for their setting power: the same collagen that makes them tender after five hours is what gave cooks their aspic before commercial gelatin was widely available. Serving them à la vinaigrette — plainly boiled, boned and sent out with a sharp herbed dressing on the side — is the simplest of the standard treatments, the counterpart to the à la poulette version Ranhofer places immediately before it, where the same cooked feet are bound in a lemony egg-and-butter sauce. Both belong to a bistro repertoire that has largely left the American table, though pigs' trotters have kept a firmer hold on it than sheep's.