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Stewed Pigs Feet

A stew of boiled pig's feet simmered with tomatoes, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Pigs Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Boil the pigs feet with bay leaf, pepper, and salt until tender.

  2. Remove the bones and cut the meat into 2-inch pieces.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a pan, heat the butter, then add flour, onion, tomatoes, and boiling water.

  2. Cook for about 15 minutes.

  3. Add the pigs feet, season well, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 boiling and then further cooking in the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce as it cooks down.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the pigs feet until tender. Pig's feet are rich in collagen, which needs long, gentle cooking to break down into gelatin. Cooking too briefly leaves the meat tough and the texture unpleasant, so the feet should be fully tender before the sauce step.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, butter, 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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