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Stewed Pigs' Feet

A stew of pig's feet simmered with salt, water, and spices, then baked and served with a cider vinegar pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the pig's feet in salt and water for 1 hour or overnight.

  2. Cover the feet with water in a kettle and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the feet and place them in a baking pan.

Brown

  1. Pour some of the broth over the feet and brown them in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the souse and pickle

  1. For souse, clean the pig's feet and ears, then place them in cold water over the fire.

  2. Boil until tender, then pour a hot pickle made of cider vinegar, whole peppers, cloves, and mace over them in a jar.

  3. Let them sit for 3 days or less before eating.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 body; long simmering turns their collagen into gelatin, giving a rich, tender texture.
Broth from boiling
Adds moisture and savoury flavour while the feet brown in the oven.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity to the hot pickle, giving a sharp tang and helping preserve the souse.
Whole peppers
Add pungent aroma and gentle heat that infuse into the hot pickle.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil until tender before pickling. Collagen in the feet and ears only softens into gelatin after prolonged simmering. Pouring the pickle over undercooked meat leaves it tough and chewy, so the feet need to be fully tender first.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, pepper, 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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