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A hearty soup made with pigs' feet and ears simmered with vegetables, herbs, and spices, thickened with rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Skim the water thoroughly when it first boils.

  2. Add salt, onions, celery, herbs, carrots, peppercorns, and mace.

  3. Stew gently until the pigs' feet and ears are tender.

  4. Remove the feet and ears, keep the liquid simmering.

  5. Return the bones to the pot.

  6. Stew the bones for an hour.

  7. Strain the soup into a clean pan and cool it overnight.

  8. Cut the meat into dice while warm and cover it with a cloth.

  9. Remove fat and sediment from the soup.

Thicken and season

  1. Heat the stock in a clean saucepan.

  2. Mix rice flour with cayenne and mace.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling stock.

  4. Add lemon juice, Harvey's sauce, and sherry.

  5. Simmer for 6-8 minutes, stirring often.

  6. Add the meat and herbs.

  7. Boil gently for 5 minutes.

  8. Serve quickly.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pigs' feet
Release gelatine and body into the stock, giving the soup its rich, thick character.
Rice flour
Thickens the stock as it heats, giving the soup body without wheat.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aromatic depth and a fortified sweetness that rounds the soup's flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its fatty savour.
Onions
Build the sweet, savoury aromatic base of the stock as they simmer.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour into the stock. Starch added to hot liquid can clump into lumps unless it is mixed in smoothly first and stirred while the stock boils, so it thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, carrot, rice, flour, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, carrot, rice, flour, pepper, lemon. 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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