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Pickled Pigs' Feet

Pickled pig's feet are boiled, then preserved in a vinegar brine with onions, sugar, peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,901 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Pickled Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the feet

  1. Place the cleaned pigs' feet in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Add ¼ cup of coarse sea salt for each gallon of water.

  3. Boil until tender.

  4. While hot, transfer the feet to a stone jar.

  5. Layer the jar with sliced onion.

Pickle

  1. In a separate pot, heat 2 quarts of vinegar, 1 pint of water, 2 tablespoons of sugar, peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaves.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pigs' feet.

  4. Cover the jar and let it stand for one day before using.

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. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavor and preserves the feet by pickling.
Pigs' feet
Supply the gelatinous collagen that gives the cooked meat its rich, tender texture.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor that infuses the pickling liquid into the meat.

The step that matters

Boil the feet until tender. Collagen in the connective tissue converts to gelatin only with prolonged moist heat, so the feet must be fully tender before they are pickled. Under-boiled feet stay tough and do not soften later in the acidic brine.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove. 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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