No. 1786

Pigs' Feet with Truffles, Perigord

Pieds de Cochon aux Truffes du Perigord

Cook the feet the same as when prepared for broiled (No. 1784), let them get partially cold in their stock, then drain, unwrap and cut each one in two lengthwise; bone every one of the halves properly, season with salt and mignonette and fill all their insides with a stuffing of pork and chopped truffles, with a quarter as much fine liver baking forcemeat (No. 81). Smooth the surface of this dressing and cover it over with slices of raw truffles; wrap each half foot in a square of soaked and well dried "crepinette" or caul fat, brush over with butter or melted lard, and dip them in bread-crumbs; broil for twenty minutes over a moderate fire, then dress on a hot dish with a little gravy (No. 404) added.

← No. 1785 Pigs Feet Truffled Pork No. 1787 Ham a la Benedict or with Jardiniere Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a larder of cross-referenced preparations behind it; the whole dish hinges on work done elsewhere in the book. Read the two referenced numbers before starting, because nothing here works without them.

The hinge: the feet must be cooked first, and cooked longNo. 1784 has them bound and simmered in stock until the rind and connective tissue are tender. The wrapping is what keeps them in shape, which is why this recipe tells you to "unwrap" them. Twenty minutes on the grill cooks the stuffing and browns the crumbs, nothing more.
Boning the halvesDo it while the feet are still warm enough to be pliable but cool enough to handle. Every small bone comes out; the skin and gelatinous flesh are left as a pocket. Chilling the halves flat between two trays afterwards makes them far easier to stuff and wrap.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, in this period usually white, sometimes a mix of white and black. Crush peppercorns under a pan rather than grinding fine.
Crepinette / caul fatHere "crepinette" is the caul itself, the lacy fat membrane from around a pig's stomach. Order it from a butcher; it usually arrives salted or frozen. Soak in cold water (a little vinegar helps), rinse, and dry thoroughly, as Ranhofer says, or it will not cling.
Liver baking forcemeat, No. 81Ranhofer's liver-and-fat-pork baking forcemeat. It is used at one part to four parts of the plain pork-and-truffle stuffing, as a binder and flavouring; a good coarse pork sausage meat enriched with a little sauteed liver is the nearest ordinary equivalent.
TrufflesPerigord means Tuber melanosporum, the winter black truffle, and the recipe uses it twice: chopped through the stuffing and sliced raw over the surface. Summer truffle or truffle paste will not carry the dish, and truffle oil is a different flavour entirely. If good black truffle is out of reach, this is a recipe to admire rather than attempt.
"Broil over a moderate fire"Grilling over medium coals, not searing heat, so the crumbs colour as the stuffing cooks through. Under a modern broiler, keep the pan well down from the element and turn once. The stuffing contains raw ground pork: take it to 160F at the centre.
Gravy No. 404Ranhofer's plain gravy. A well-reduced brown veal stock serves; the recipe calls for "a little gravy", a spoonful of moistening under the feet, not a coating.
YieldEach foot gives two stuffed halves. Two halves make a substantial course, so four feet serve four as a main dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in The Epicurean (1894) as one of a short run of pigs' feet preparations, immediately after No. 1785, "Pigs Feet Truffled" — a reminder that in a nineteenth-century luxury kitchen the cheapest cut in the shop and the most expensive fungus in Europe belonged on the same plate. Crumbed and grilled pigs' feet are generally traced to Sainte-Menehould in Champagne, and boned and stuffed versions to the charcuterie traditions of Lyon; the word crepinette is used here, as Ranhofer uses it, for the caul itself, and also came to mean the small flat forcemeat parcel wrapped in it. Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, was working a standard French technique — long cooking, bone out, stuff, wrap, grill — and simply raising it into the truffle season by naming Perigord. That the labour of boning four feet by hand went unremarked tells you as much about the staffing of a great restaurant kitchen of the 1890s as the truffles do about its clientele.