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Pigs' Feet and Ears

A dish of braised pigs' feet and shredded ear served with bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, shallots, mushrooms, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigs' Feet and Ears

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Braise the pigs' feet in a brown sauce until tender, ensuring the bones pull out easily.

  2. Shred the ear finely and mix it into the sauce.

Coat and cook

  1. Dip the pigs' feet in the bread crumbs mixed with parsley, thyme, shallots, mushrooms, and salt.

  2. Heat clarified butter in a sauté pan and cook the pigs' feet until they are a nice light brown.

Drain and serve

  1. Lay the cooked feet on a clean cloth to absorb excess fat and arrange them on a platter with the ear in the center.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Become tender through long braising, and their collagen-rich skin and bones give body to the dish.
Pig's ear
Adds chewy texture as it is finely shredded into the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the feet when fried in butter.
Clarified butter
Conducts heat for even frying and browning, adding rich flavor without milk solids burning.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Cook the coated feet until light brown. Clarified butter tolerates higher heat than whole butter, so the coating can brown evenly without burning. Too little heat leaves the crumbs pale and greasy, while too much darkens them before the feet are heated through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, thyme, shallot, mushroom, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, thyme, shallot, mushroom, butter. 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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