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Soused Feet in Magout

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Soused Feet in Magout

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald and scrape the pork feet clean. If necessary, singe the toes in hot embers to remove the covering.

  2. Wash the feet and place them in a pot of warm water with a little salt. Boil gently until the flesh is tender and the bones loosen easily.

  3. Remove the scum as it rises. Once done, take the feet out and soak them in vinegar, adding a quarter of a pint of the boiling water.

  4. Add whole pepper, cloves, and mace to the vinegar. Place the feet in a jar and cover closely.

  5. Split the feet in two, dredge with flour, and fry until golden brown.

  6. Prepare a well-seasoned gravy thickened with brown flour and butter, and stew the fried feet in it for a few minutes.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, vinegar, pepper, clove, flour, butter):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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