Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Fried Pigs Feet
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the pigs feet in salt water overnight.
Wash thoroughly in fresh water.
Boil in hot water for 30 minutes, then simmer for several hours until very tender.
Remove from heat and place on a platter without touching each other.
When partly cool, remove the large bone and let cool completely.
Coat and fry
Beat the egg and mix with hot water.
Dip the pigs feet in the egg mixture, then roll in cracker dust.
Heat equal parts butter and lard in a frying pan to cover the bottom.
Fry the pigs feet until golden brown on both sides.
Serve hot.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 after long gentle simmering.
- Egg
- Binds the cracker dust coating so it adheres to the meat while frying.
- Cracker dust
- Forms a crisp, golden crust that browns when fried.
- Butter and lard
- Fat for frying that carries heat and browns the coating.
The step that matters
Simmering until very tender. Pigs feet are rich in collagen, which must break down over several hours of gentle simmering to become tender. Stopping early leaves the meat tough and chewy, and it cannot be fixed by frying.
“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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