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Soused Feet and Ears

A pickled pork dish made from feet and ears, seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Soused Feet and Ears

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Thoroughly cleanse the feet and ears of bacon pigs.

  2. Salt the feet and ears as usual and boil until tender with vegetables for flavor.

  3. Remove from heat, split the feet, and divide the ears.

Pickle

  1. Pack the meat in a deep jar and pour boiling vinegar over to cover.

  2. Add the mace, peppercorns, allspice berries, celery seed, ginger, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Tie the spices in muslin and boil in a little vinegar, then leave in the jar with the meat.

  4. Keep covered in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little of the pickle and accompany with salad or sweet pickles.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Feet and ears of bacon pigs
The main meat, which becomes tender through boiling and then firm and jellied when pickled.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the meat and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture and firm its texture.
Allspice berries
Adds warm aromatic flavor to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Boil the feet and ears until tender before pickling. The meat must be fully tender before it goes into the vinegar, because the acid firms and sets the surface and will not soften tough collagen-rich tissue.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, allspice, celery, ginger, pepper):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, celery, ginger, pepper. 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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