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To Ragoo Pigs’ Feet and Ears

A dish of boiled pigs' feet and ears coated in butter, fried, then simmered in a gravy of beef, lemon pickle, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Ragoo Pigs’ Feet and Ears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the pigs' feet and ears until tender.

  2. Split the feet down the middle and cut the ears into narrow slices.

  3. Dip the feet and ears in butter and fry until golden brown.

Make the ragoo

  1. In a pan, combine beef gravy, lemon pickle, mushroom ketchup, and salt.

  2. Thicken the mixture with a lump of butter rolled in flour.

  3. Add the fried feet and ears to the pan and bring to a gentle boil.

Serve

  1. Arrange the feet in the center of a dish and place the ears around them.

  2. Strain the gravy and pour it over the dish.

  3. Garnish with curled parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 gelatinous, tender meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Pigs' ears
Add chewy texture and body contrasting with the tender feet.
Butter
Adds richness and, when frying, promotes golden browning on the meat.
Beef gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the meat simmers in.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.

The step that matters

Frying the feet and ears until golden brown. The meat is already cooked from boiling, so frying is for colour and flavour. Dry, well-heated surfaces brown through the Maillard reaction; overcrowding or pale, wet pieces steam instead and stay pale.

“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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