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Broiled Pig's Feet
Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter. Work gradually into it one scant tablespoonful of lemon juice, one-half of a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne and one-half of a tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley. Brush each piece of meat with melted butter and dust with salt and pepper. Place in a broiler and broil over a clear fire for six minutes. Transfer to a hot platter and spread with the prepared butter.
This is the finishing step for pig's feet, not the whole job: the book assumes cooked, cooled feet already in the larder. Read it as a broiling-and-butter method rather than a start-to-finish recipe.
- The feet must be cooked firstSix minutes over a fire will not cook a raw trotter, which is collagen, skin and small bones and needs several hours of gentle simmering in seasoned water before it is edible. The recipe's silence on preliminary cooking suggests the book expected already-boiled or pickled feet to be at hand; the broiler is only there to brown and crisp the outside. Use feet that have been simmered until the meat yields easily, then chilled, split lengthwise and patted dry.
- "A clear fire"This means coals burned down past the smoking stage, with steady radiant heat and no flame licking the meat. A modern broiler at its highest setting with the rack about four inches from the element is the nearest equivalent; the recipe does not say whether to turn the pieces, but six minutes divided as three a side, until the skin blisters and colours, works.
- The prepared butterButter creamed with lemon juice, salt, cayenne and parsley is maitre d'hotel butter, a standard finish of the period. Have the butter properly soft, not melted, and work the lemon juice in a little at a time or it will separate. It can be rolled in paper and chilled, then sliced in coins over the hot meat.
- "One scant tablespoonful"Scant means just under a level measure. A full tablespoon of lemon juice into two tablespoons of butter risks a broken, watery sauce.
- CayenneA dash is about an eighth of a teaspoon. Cayenne here is for warmth against the richness of the gelatinous skin, not for heat you can identify.
- SourcingFresh pig's feet are a special order at most supermarkets but standard at Latin, Chinese and Eastern European butchers, usually sold split. Avoid the jarred pickled kind for this, as the vinegar fights the lemon butter.
Pig's feet were a thrift item that survived into the twentieth century as a delicacy in their own right, largely because of what they do in the pot: the trotter is almost pure collagen, and long simmering turns it to gelatin, which is why it was also the standard body-builder in stocks, brawn and jellied meats. Cooking them twice, once wet and once over the fire, is an old French treatment generally associated with the pieds de porc panes of the bistro table, where the boiled feet are crumbed and grilled. The finishing butter is textbook late-Victorian American cooking by way of Fannie Farmer's generation of cookery schools, where maitre d'hotel butter was taught as a base preparation and then applied to almost anything broiled, from steak to fish to trotters.