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Sheeps' Trotters Fried

Fried sheep's trotters with a seasoned vegetable sauce and batter coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Sheeps' Trotters Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trotters

  1. Clean the sheep's trotters and scald them in hot water.

  2. Stew the trotters in the same sauce used for boiling calf's head.

  3. Bone the trotters.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt a little butter and fry the chopped carrots, onions, parsley roots, thyme, shallot, bay leaf, and clove until they begin to color.

  2. Moisten the vegetables with equal parts water and vinegar.

  3. Let the vegetables stew until tender.

  4. Season the vegetables with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Strain the seasoned mixture over the sheep's trotters.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix 4 tablespoons of flour with a little salt, olive oil, and enough beer or water to form a paste.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites to the paste and mix the batter well.

  3. Dip the trotters into the batter.

  4. Fry the battered trotters immediately.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's trotters
Slow stewing turns their connective tissue into gelatin, giving a rich, moist texture.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add air and structure to the batter, helping it puff and cling to the trotters.
Flour
Forms the paste that coats the trotters and crisps and browns when fried.
Butter
Fat that browns the vegetables, building colour and a deeper savoury flavour in the sauce.
Onions
Caramelise when coloured, adding sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Fry the battered trotters immediately. Beaten egg whites lose their trapped air as batter stands, so a delay makes the coating heavy and less crisp. Frying straight after dipping keeps the batter light and helps it set quickly in hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, parsley, thyme, shallot, clove, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, parsley, thyme, shallot, clove, pepper. 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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