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Pickled Pigs' Feet

Pickled pig's feet are veal leg and pig feet simmered with salt, pepper, bay leaf, onions, lemon, and vinegar, then cooled and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pickled Pigs' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Cook the leg of veal and pigs' feet in water with salt, pepper, bay leaf, onions, and lemon until tender.

  2. When nearly done, add vinegar.

Prepare and set

  1. Remove the bones.

  2. Cut the meat into coarse pieces.

  3. Strain the gravy over the meat.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Slice and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal leg
Provides the main meat and collagen that gives the set jelly body.
Pigs' feet
Contribute gelatin-rich collagen that helps the gravy set as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the rich meat.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar near the end of cooking. Acid added too early can slow the softening of connective tissue, so the meat may stay tough. Adding it when nearly done keeps the meat tender while still flavoring the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, vinegar. 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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