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Pigs' Feet and Ears, Pickled

Pickled pig's feet and ears boiled with bay leaf, cloves, mace, coriander seed, ginger, white wine, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pigs' Feet and Ears, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pigs' feet and ears in water.

  2. Add bay leaves, cloves, mace, coriander seed, and ginger.

  3. Pour in the white wine and add the sweet herbs.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil gently until tender.

  2. Remove from the liquid and place in an earthen pan.

  3. Once cooled, remove the fat and strain the liquid over the feet and ears.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + coriandertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet and ears
Main protein; slow simmering softens the connective tissue until tender.
White wine
Adds acidity to the pickling liquid, which helps preserve and flavour the meat.
Bay leaf
Adds aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A rolling boil can toughen the meat and break it apart. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin, leaving the feet and ears tender and intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, coriander, ginger, white wine):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, coriander, ginger, white wine. 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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