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Pigs' Feet in Jelly (Scrape and clean half a dozen)
Scrape and clean half a dozen pigs' feet. Cover with boiling, slightly salted water, and simmer for half an hour; then drain and rinse them. Put on in a clean kettle and cover with vinegar and water in equal parts. (Do not have the vinegar too strong). To two quarts of the liquid allow one teaspoonful and a half of salt, one tablespoonful of sugar, one small bay leaf, half a dozen cloves, half a dozen tiny red peppers, one sprig of thyme and one small onion sliced. Simmer steadily until tender; place the feet in a jar and boil the liquor until it is reduced one-half. Strain it through double cheese cloth over the feet and keep in a cold place. Good for lunch or supper.
This is souse — pigs' feet cooked soft in a spiced vinegar broth that sets to a firm jelly on its own collagen. The original gives no times beyond "until tender," which is where the whole dish is won or lost.
- The hinge: cook them genuinely soft"Simmer steadily until tender" means 3 to 4 hours at a bare tremble, until the skin yields with no resistance and the bones loosen. Undercooked feet give a weak jelly and a rubbery bite; a rolling boil clouds the liquor and shreds the skin.
- Buying and prepping the feetAsk a butcher for feet split lengthwise; they pack into a jar more neatly. "Scrape and clean" refers to removing stray bristles and dirt from the cleft between the toes; a stiff brush and a quick scrape with a knife back does it. The first half-hour boil is a blanch to draw off scum, and the rinse afterward is not optional if you want clear jelly.
- How strong the vinegar should be"Do not have the vinegar too strong" was written when household vinegar varied widely. Standard 5 percent cider or white wine vinegar cut half-and-half with water lands near 2.5 percent, which is about right — sharp but not aggressive, and acidic enough to help the keeping.
- Tiny red peppersThese are small dried hot chiles — pequin, bird or cayenne types. Six of them in two quarts gives a warm background, not heat you would call spicy. A pinch of red pepper flakes stands in.
- Reducing the liquorBoiling the strained cooking liquid by half concentrates both the gelatin and the seasoning, so taste it before it goes over the feet: the reduction roughly doubles the salt, though some of the vinegar's sharpness boils away. Two quarts of liquid reduced to one quart should set firmly once cold, given properly cooked feet.
- "A cold place" means the refrigeratorThe original assumed a cellar or cold pantry in winter. This is a cooked, acidified, refrigerator preparation, not a shelf-stable pickle — it is not sealed or processed. Keep it at 40F or below and eat it within about four or five days.
- Yield and servingSix feet will roughly fill a two-quart jar and serve six to eight as a cold plate. Turn the set jelly out and slice it, or lift out pieces with a little of the jelly clinging, and serve with mustard, rye bread and pickles.
Jellied or pickled pigs' feet — souse in English, and close kin to French pieds de porc à la vinaigrette and the Slavic and German aspics variously called studzienina, sülze or saure Füße — belong to the older economy of the whole hog, in which little with gristle in it was wasted. Feet are largely collagen and skin, which is precisely the point: cooked long enough they release enough gelatin to set their own broth with no packaged gelatine added, something cookbooks of this period generally assumed. The vinegar does double duty, cutting the fattiness and helping the keeping in an era when "a cold place" was often the only refrigeration available. That the book recommends the dish for "lunch or supper" says something about how these lighter, cold, non-dinner meals were assembled from things already standing in the pantry rather than cooked to order.