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Pigs' Feet Soused

A dish of boiled pigs' feet soured in vinegar and spices, served cold or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pigs' Feet Soused

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and scrape the pigs' feet.

  2. Singe the toes in hot embers if necessary to remove the covering.

  3. Wash the feet and place them in a pot of hot (not boiling) water with a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil gently until the flesh is tender and the bones are loosened, skimming off any scum that rises.

Sour

  1. Transfer the feet to cold vinegar, enough to cover them, and add one-third of the water used for boiling.

  2. Add whole pepper, allspice, and optional cloves and mace.

  3. Cover the pot or jar tightly.

Serve

  1. Serve the soured feet cold from the vinegar, split in half, or dip in wheat flour and fry in hot lard until browned.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle boiling and then firms up as it sours.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sours and preserves the meat and gives it its sharp flavour.
Wheat flour
Forms a light coating that helps the feet brown and crisp when fried in lard.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Boil gently, not vigorously. Boiling hard breaks up the tender flesh and can cloud the liquid, while gentle heat softens the meat and loosens the bones evenly. Skimming removes scum that would spoil the flavour.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, allspice, mace, wheat, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, allspice, mace, wheat, flour. 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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