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Pigs Feet and Ears, and Cow-heel

A boiled dish of pig feet, ears, and cow heel seasoned with salt and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,418 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Pigs Feet and Ears, and Cow-heel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the pig feet and ears with coarse sea salt for 8 to 10 days.

  2. Soak the salted feet and ears in water for a short time.

Cook

  1. In a large saucepan, boil the feet and ears gently in soft water with 1 quart of milk for about 3 hours until very tender.

  2. For cow-heel, add salt and 4 to 5 large onions to the boiling water and cook similarly.

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 + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs feet
Their collagen breaks down during long cooking, giving the soup body and a gelatinous texture.
Pigs ears
Their collagen softens into gelatin during slow cooking, adding body and richness to the broth.
Coarse sea salt
Long salting seasons the meat deeply and firms its texture before cooking.
4 large onions
Onions add savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Cook gently for about 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth rich. A hard boil toughens the meat, clouds the liquid and can break the pieces apart.

“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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