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Pigs Feet and Fan

Braised pigs feet, shredded ears mixed with rober-sauce, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pigs Feet and Fan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Braise the pigs feet in a brown braise until tender, allowing the bones to pull out easily.

  2. Shred the ears finely and mix with rober-sauce.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the pigs feet in egg, then coat with bread crumbs mixed with parsley, thyme, shallot, salt, and pepper.

  2. Clarify a little butter in a pan and place the pigs feet in it.

  3. Cook on the stove until they are a nice light brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange the ears on the dish first, then place the feet around them.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs feet
Braising makes them tender, and the crumb coating and butter give them a light brown crust.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumb coating stick to the feet.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries browning and adds rich flavor to the coating.

The step that matters

Cook on the stove until light brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction. If the heat is too high, the coating scorches before the feet are heated through, and too low leaves it pale and soggy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, 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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