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Pig’s Feet and Ears Fricasseed

A fricassee of pig's feet and ears simmered in veal broth, milk, and aromatics, finished with cream, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Pig’s Feet and Ears Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the pig's feet in half and slice the ears.

  2. Fry the feet and ears, then serve with butter, mustard, and vinegar.

Simmer

  1. Cut the feet and ears into neat pieces and boil them in milk.

  2. Drain the milk and simmer the pieces in veal broth with onion, mace, and lemon peel.

Finish

  1. Before serving, add cream, flour, butter, and salt.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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).

Flour and butter 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

Pig's feet
Provide gelatin and body, giving the dish a rich, sticky texture.
Pig's ears
Add gelatin and a chewy, tender texture to the pieces.
Veal broth
Supplies the main savory liquid in which the meat simmers.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sauce and rounding its flavour.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream before serving. Flour stirred into hot liquid forms lumps unless it is first blended smoothly with butter or cold liquid. The sauce must then cook briefly so the starch swells and thickens it fully, while cream added at high heat can split.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, veal, onion, lemon, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, veal, onion, lemon, cream, flour, 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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