Put four pig’s feet, or calf’s feet, and one pound of veal into four
quarts of cold water, and let it simmer for five hours, reducing it to
two quarts. Strain it, and let it remain overnight. The next day skim
off the fat from the top, and remove the settlings from the bottom.
About half an hour before dinner put the soup on the fire, and season it
with half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, a salt-spoonful of mace, a
salt-spoonful of ground cloves. Simmer it for ten minutes. Now make a
_roux_ in a saucepan, viz.: put in one ounce of butter (size of a
walnut), and, when it bubbles, sprinkle in one and a half ounces of
flour (one table-spoonful). Stir it until the flour assumes a
light-brown color; add the soup, and stir all together with the
egg-whisk.
Make force-meat balls as follows: Chop some of the veal (used to make
the soup), and about a quarter as much suet, very fine; season it with
salt and pepper, and a few drops of lemon-juice; bind all together with
some raw yolks of eggs and some cracker or bread crumbs; mold them into
little balls about the size of a pigeon’s egg, or smaller, if preferred.
Fry them in boiling lard, or boil them two or three minutes in water.
Cut up also some of the meat, or rather skin and cartilaginous
substance, from the cold feet, which resembles turtle meat. Now put into
the soup-tureen these meat-balls, pieces of calf’s feet, and some yolks
entire, or slices of hard-boiled eggs. Season the soup the last minute
with a little lemon-juice and one or two table-spoonfuls of sherry.
For a small family, this will make soup enough for two dinners.