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Pigs' Feet

Battered pigs' feet are boiled, coated in corn flour batter, and sautéed until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and split the pigs' feet down the center.

  2. Wash them well and bring to a boil in enough water to cover.

Soften

  1. Place in a fireless cooker with a well-heated stone for 4 to 5 hours until softened.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, corn flour, egg, baking powder, and salt to make a batter.

  2. Dip the pigs' feet in the batter.

  3. Sauté in small amounts of vegetable oil until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Provide the meat that is softened first and then coated and fried.
Corn flour
Forms the batter coating that becomes crisp and golden when fried.
Egg
Binds the batter so it clings to the pigs' feet.
Baking powder
Lightens the batter by releasing gas, giving a more tender coating.
Milk
Moistens the batter so it spreads evenly over the pigs' feet.

The step that matters

Sautéing in oil until golden brown. Frying in small amounts of oil at a steady heat crisps the batter while the meat stays hot. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and greasy, while too much browns it before the inside is hot.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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