Skip to main content
Main

Pigs' Feet Soused

A dish of pig's feet that are boiled, soured in vinegar, and optionally fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the feet

  1. Scald and scrape the pig's feet clean.

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

  3. Soak the feet in weak lime water to whiten them, if desired.

  4. Wash them thoroughly.

Cook and sour

  1. Place the cleaned feet in a pot of hot (not boiling) water with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil gently until the flesh is tender and the bones loosen.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises during boiling.

  4. Transfer the cooked feet to cold vinegar, enough to cover them.

  5. Add one-third as much of the boiling water.

  6. Season with whole pepper, allspice, and optional cloves and mace.

  7. Cover the pot or jar tightly.

Serve

  1. To serve, eat the soured feet cold from the vinegar.

  2. Split them in half, 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, skin and gelatinous body that become tender through long gentle cooking.
Vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the cooked feet, giving them their sour flavour.
Wheat flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the feet brown and crisp when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat in frying and adds fat that promotes browning and richness.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the flesh is tender and the bones loosen. Boiling hard can break up the skin and toughen the meat, while gentle heat lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin so the flesh becomes tender and the bones release.

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.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes