Skip to main content
Main

Pigs’ Feet and Truffles

A dish of boiled pigs’ feet and truffles wrapped in forcemeat and caul, then breaded and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pigs’ Feet and Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the pigs’ feet until done, then drain and cut into small dice.

  2. Slice the cooked truffles thinly.

  3. Make forcemeat by mixing veal, fat bacon, and spiced salt.

  4. Soak the pig’s caul in cold water, then drain and dry it.

Form the crepinettes

  1. Spread a layer of forcemeat about ½ inch thick on the caul, 3 inches long and 1½ inches wide.

  2. Layer the sliced truffles and diced pigs’ feet on the forcemeat, then add another layer of forcemeat.

  3. Wrap the caul around the filling to form crepinettes.

Coat, cook and serve

  1. Dip the crepinettes in melted butter, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Boil the crepinettes slowly for 15 minutes until nicely colored.

  3. Serve on a hot dish garnished with parsley.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Truffle + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs’ feet
Provide body and gelatin-rich texture to the filling as they cook down.
Truffles cooked in madeira
Add a strong earthy aroma and luxurious flavor to the filling.
Forcemeat
Binds the filling and keeps it moist and tender while it cooks.
Pig’s caul
Wraps the filling and holds its shape while it cooks.
Melted butter
Carries the bread crumbs and promotes browning on the outside.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside of the crepinettes.

The step that matters

Soak and dry the pig’s caul before wrapping. Caul is delicate and can tear if it is stiff or unevenly moist. Soaking softens it so it can wrap the filling, and drying it keeps the wrap from making the coating soggy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, veal, butter, bread):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, veal, butter, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes