No. 1783

Pigs' Feet a la St. Menehould

Pieds de Cochon a la St. Menehould

Have eight scalded and clean pigs' feet; soak them for several hours in water, drain, and place them in a saucepan with cold water; bring this to a boil, and continue simmering slowly for three-quarters of an hour; then drain, refresh, wipe and singe the feet; tie them together with a tape and range them in a stock pot having the bottom covered with large vegetables; pour over plenty of water and a bottleful of white wine, adding salt and aromatics, then boil again while skimming; now paste on the lid with a paste made of flour and water, and continue cooking the feet for twelve hours in the oven, allowing them to cool off in their own stock; drain, untie, and split each one in two lengthwise; season over with salt and mignonette, bread-crumb them English style, or with egg-yolks beaten up with melted butter (No. 13), then roll in bread-crumbs, broil of a nice color over a moderate fire, serve very hot.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a two-day proposition: a very long, very low braise, then a coating and a grilling. Nothing here is difficult, but the timings and the vocabulary need translating.

The hinge: low and sealedThe twelve-hour cooking is what makes the dish: it turns cartilage to gelatin and softens the small bones. Ranhofer gives no temperature, only "in the oven"; a very low oven, somewhere around 250-275F, is what the timing implies, and much hotter than that risks shredding the feet before the connective tissue has broken down.
Pasting on the lidA stiff flour-and-water paste rolled into a rope and pressed around the rim of the lid is a luting seal, used to stop evaporation over long cooking. A tight-fitting lid plus a sheet of parchment or foil under it does the same job.
"Scalded and clean"Butchers once sold feet already scalded and scraped. Modern fresh pigs' feet usually still need a check for bristles, hence the singeing after the first blanch. The initial 45-minute boil-and-refresh removes scum; do not skip it or the braising liquid will be cloudy and off-flavoured.
RefreshTo refresh means to plunge into cold water to stop the cooking and firm the surface, not to rinse briefly.
Large vegetables and aromaticsRanhofer does not specify; carrot, onion and leek in big pieces would be the usual choice, laid on the bottom so the feet do not scorch. "Aromatics" in this kitchen generally covers something like thyme, bay, parsley stems and a few peppercorns and cloves.
TapeCotton tape or butcher's twine, tied so the feet hold their shape through half a day of cooking. Untie only after they have cooled in the stock, or they will fall apart.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, traditionally white. Not a fine grind.
Breaded English styleAnglaise means flour, then beaten egg, then breadcrumbs. Ranhofer's alternative — egg yolks beaten with melted butter, then crumbs — gives a richer, more fragile crust.
Broiling"Over a moderate fire" would have meant a coal or charcoal broiler; an oven broiler or a hot ridged pan works, but keep the heat middling. The interior is already cooked and mostly gelatin, so you are only browning the crust — a few minutes a side.
YieldEight feet, split, gives sixteen halves — four to eight servings depending on whether this is a course or the whole plate. Mustard is a common accompaniment, though Ranhofer does not call for it.

A Little History

The name points to Sainte-Menehould, a town in the Marne in Champagne long identified with pigs' feet cooked until the bones themselves can be chewed; local tradition holds that the technique was discovered by accident when a batch was left too long over the fire, though that story is folklore rather than record. What is documented is that by the nineteenth century pieds de porc à la Sainte-Menehould was a fixed item in the French professional repertoire, and Charles Ranhofer brought it into The Epicurean (1894) along with much of the rest of Delmonico's kitchen vocabulary. It belongs to a category of cooking that a restaurant with a large brigade and a cooling coal range could afford and a home cook largely could not: an overnight braise of a nearly free cut, redeemed at the last minute by breadcrumbs and a grill.