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Petit-toes, or Sucking Pig's Feet

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Petit-toes, or Sucking Pig's Feet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the bacon in a stew pan with the broth, mace, peppercorns, and thyme.

  2. Boil the pig's feet until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the heart, liver, and lights after 10 minutes, mince them finely.

  4. Combine the minced organs with the feet in the stew pan.

  5. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 5 minutes, shaking occasionally.

  6. Toast the bread lightly, cut it into sippets, and arrange them around a serving dish.

  7. Pour the mince and sauce into the center of the dish and place the split feet around it.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour 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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, butter, flour, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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