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Pickled Pigs' Feet

Pickled pig's feet are soaked in brine, then simmered with carrot, onions, celery, and parsley, cut, shaped, and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pickled Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pigs' feet in common brine for 10 days.

  2. Wash the feet well.

Cook

  1. Cook the feet slowly in water with the carrot, onions, celery, and parsley.

  2. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Drain the feet, cut them in half, and remove the larger bones.

  4. Press the halves together into shape and let cool.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Provides the main meat and gelatinous body of the dish.
Common brine
Cures and seasons the feet during the 10-day soak.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 3 to 4 hours. Slow, gentle simmering softens the connective tissue and collagen in the feet so they become tender and gelatinous rather than tough. A hard boil can toughen the meat and break the skin apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, parsley. 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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