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Pigs' Feet, Pickled

Pickled pig's feet prepared by boiling, pickling, and frying in batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pigs' Feet, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Scrape and wash the pigs' feet clean.

  2. Place them in a saucepan and cover with hot (not boiling) water.

  3. When partly cooked, add coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil for 4 to 5 hours until soft.

Pickle

  1. Pack the feet in a stone crock and pour hot spiced vinegar over them.

  2. Let them sit for 1 to 2 days before using.

Fry and serve

  1. For breakfast, split the feet.

  2. Make a batter with 2 eggs, ½ cup milk, 1 teaspoon butter, and enough flour to create a thick batter.

  3. Dip each piece in the batter and fry in hot lard.

  4. Alternatively, dip them in beaten egg and flour, then fry.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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 meat and gelatin that give the dish its body and texture after long simmering.
Spiced vinegar
Acidity that pickles the feet, flavouring and preserving them during the resting period.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats each piece and crisps when fried.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds richness.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 to 5 hours until soft. Long, gentle cooking breaks down collagen in the connective tissue into gelatin, making the feet tender. Stopping early leaves them tough and hard to pickle evenly.

“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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