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Potage Au Calves' Feet
Wash in cold water two fresh calves' feet, then place in a stock pot, with a pound knuckle of veal, a beef marrowbone and any scraps of raw veal, beef and chicken on hand. Moisten with three and half quarts water. Season with a level teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; place the pot on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil skim off the scum. Add a sliced carrot, two sliced onions, two sliced leeks, two sliced branches celery, four branches parsley, a branch chervil, one clove, one sprig bay leaf, one saltspoon thyme and one bean sound garlic. Cover the pan and let very slowly simmer for two hours. Lift up the calves' feet, plunge them into cold water for two minutes; bone them and cut the meat into half-inch-square pieces and keep on a plate. Heat in a saucepan a half ounce melted butter, add one ounce flour, stir with a wooden spoon until a nice light brown, then strain broth into the pan; add two tablespoons sherry and two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. Mix well with a whisk for two minutes; add the meat from calves' feet, boil for ten minutes, then add half a peeled and seeded sound lemon, finely sliced. Mix a little and serve.
N. B. All meat, bones and vegetables left remaining from the soup add to the demi-glace pot.
A gelatinous clear soup built on calves' feet, thickened lightly with a brown roux and finished like a mock turtle. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the quantities and the timing need translating.
- Calves' feetOrder them from a halal, kosher or Latin butcher, or substitute split veal knuckles plus a pig's trotter for the same gelatin. Ask for them split lengthwise; whole feet are awkward in a pot and give up their gelatin more slowly.
- Two hours is not enoughTwo hours may not be enough — feet often want three hours or more at a bare simmer before the meat pulls cleanly from the bone. Test by tugging at a toe bone: if it does not slip free, keep going. Undercooked feet give a thin broth and rubbery cubes.
- Skim, then never boilSkim, then keep it gentle — once the scum is off, hold the pot at a lazy tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and marrow into the stock and clouds it.
- Archaic measuresA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A "bean" of garlic is a single clove. "One sprig bay leaf" means one leaf. Three and a half quarts is about 3.3 litres.
- The roux is deliberately slightHalf an ounce of butter and one ounce of flour to over three quarts of broth is barely a binding — roughly a tablespoon of butter and a scant quarter cup of flour. The body comes from the feet, not the flour, so resist the urge to thicken further.
- Worcestershire and sherryTwo tablespoons of each go in with the strained broth, and the soup then boils ten minutes, which takes the raw edge off both. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than cream sherry.
- The lemon at the endPeel it down to the flesh, remove every seed and pith, and slice thin. It goes in at the very end and is not boiled; its job is to cut the richness of the gelatin, and long cooking turns it bitter.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. Flat-leaf parsley with a few fennel fronds or a pinch of tarragon comes close enough for a stock aromatic.
- Yield and the leftover noteRoughly three quarts after reduction and straining, serving eight to ten. The closing instruction assumes a professional kitchen keeping a standing demi-glace pot; at home, freeze the strained solids' second extraction or discard them.
Preparations of calves' feet sit at the junction of thrift and luxury: the feet were cheap offal, but the gelatin they yielded was what gave a kitchen its jellies, its aspics and the trembling body of a good consommé, in the era before commercial gelatin was universal. The sherry, Worcestershire and lemon here are the standard flavouring of English mock turtle soup, which used a boiled calf's head to imitate the texture of green turtle; this version simply moves the trick down to the feet. The instruction to plunge the cooked feet into cold water before boning is a working cook's habit: it firms the gelatinous skin just enough to cut cleanly.