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Sucking Pigs Feet

A stew of pig's feet simmered with herbs, spices, and wine, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Sucking Pigs Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the pig's feet and plucks in boiling water.

  2. Place the feet in a pot with ½ pint of water, shallots, parsley, sage, nutmeg, and mace.

Stew

  1. Cook until the feet are three-quarters done and the liquid is nearly reduced.

  2. Mince the pluck and add it to the pot with the feet, along with the cullis, lemon pickle, and white wine.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Stew the feet until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets of bread around them, either plain or fried.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's feet
Provide gelatinous collagen that enriches the stew and gives it a rich, silky body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich, fatty broth.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity and salty tang that cut through the richness of the meat.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that builds flavour in the liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until the feet are three-quarters done and the liquid is nearly reduced. Collagen in pig's feet only softens into gelatin after long, slow cooking, so stopping at this point leaves a thin liquid. Reducing concentrates flavour while the later stewing completes tenderness, so the stage must be timed by the liquid's reduction, not by the clock.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, parsley, sage, nutmeg, lemon, white wine, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, parsley, sage, nutmeg, lemon, white wine, pepper. 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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