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Pigs’ Feet Soused

A dish of boiled pig's feet cured in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pigs’ Feet Soused

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Scald and scrape the pig's feet clean. Singe the toes in hot embers if necessary.

  2. Soak the feet in weak lime water to whiten them, if desired.

  3. Wash the feet and place them in a pot of hot (not boiling) water with a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil gently until the flesh breaks easily with a fork and the bones are loosened. Skim off any scum.

Sour and serve

  1. Transfer the feet to cold vinegar, enough to cover them, and add one-third of the water used for boiling.

  2. Add whole pepper, allspice, and optional cloves and mace. Cover the pot or jar tightly.

  3. Serve the soured feet cold from the vinegar, split in two, or dip in wheat flour and fry in hot lard until browned.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 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

Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that sours and preserves the feet.
Pigs' feet
Gelatinous skin, tendons and bones give the finished dish its body and texture.
Wheat flour
Forms a light coating that browns and crisps when fried in lard.
Lard
Fat that fries the floured feet, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Boiling gently until the flesh just yields. Boiling vigorously can break the skin and toughen the meat, while gentle heat softens collagen into tender flesh and loosened bones without falling apart.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, allspice, mace, wheat, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, allspice, mace, wheat, flour. 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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