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Pieds De Veau Frits — Fried Calves’ Feet

Fried calves’ feet are boiled, marinated, floured, and fried, served with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pieds De Veau Frits — Fried Calves’ Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the calves’ feet in half.

  2. Boil them in flour and water until tender.

Marinate

  1. Soak the feet in a marinade of butter rolled in flour, salt, pepper, vinegar, garlic, shallots, parsley, green onions, thyme, and bay leaves.

Fry and serve

  1. Flour the marinated feet and fry them covered with paste until golden brown.

  2. Serve with fried parsley.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves’ feet
Provide gelatinous connective tissue that becomes tender and rich when simmered.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquid and forms a coating that browns when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the marinade, carrying flavour into the meat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, brightening flavour and helping tenderise the meat.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the marinade.
Shallots
Add mild onion sweetness and aroma to the marinade.

The step that matters

Boil until tender before frying. The feet must be fully softened by simmering, because the connective tissue turns to gelatin only with long, gentle cooking. Frying cannot make them tender, so frying too early leaves them tough and chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, vinegar, garlic, shallot, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, vinegar, garlic, shallot, parsley. 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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