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Fig’s Feet, Devilled

Salted pig's feet, boiled and boned, then served in a devilled sauce of chutney, catsup, vinegar, mustard and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fig’s Feet, Devilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Boil the salted pig's feet until the bones can be removed.

  2. Press the halves and let them cool.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the boiling liquor, hot chutney, mushroom catsup, brown vinegar, dry mustard mixed with browned flour, and minced onions.

  2. Add salt to taste and bring the sauce to a boil.

  3. Stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the feet in a stewpan.

  2. Cover and let it sit for 15 minutes before serving.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Pig's feet
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender after long boiling and then pressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy, smooth finish to the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the sauce.
Brown vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the meat and butter.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil before adding the butter. Boiling thickens the flour-based sauce and cooks out the raw starch taste. Stirring in butter off the heat keeps it glossy and prevents it from separating into greasy droplets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, vinegar, mustard, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar, mustard, flour, 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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