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Breaded Pigs' Feet

Breaded pig's feet fried in butter and served with lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breaded Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the pigs' feet dry.

  2. Dip the feet in the beaten egg.

  3. Roll the feet in bread crumbs or cracker crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in butter in a skillet until cooked through.

  2. Serve with quartered lemons.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Main protein; the dish is built around cooking them until cooked through.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres to the feet while frying.
Bread crumbs or cracker crumbs
Forms the crisp, golden coating that sets during frying.
Butter
Fat for frying, adding richness and browning the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Coating adhesion before frying. The feet should be dry before dipping, and the egg and crumbs should coat evenly. Moisture on the surface makes the crumbs slide off and steam rather than crisp in the hot butter.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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