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Soused Feet

Soused feet are pork or beef feet pickled in vinegar and spices, then optionally fried.

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 ↓

Soused Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Remove the gills from the feet and soak them in weak lime water to whiten.

  2. Scrape the feet clean.

  3. Wash the feet.

  4. Place the feet in a pot of hot (not boiling) water with a little coarse sea salt.

  5. Boil gently until the flesh breaks easily with a fork and the bones loosen.

  6. Skim off any scum that rises.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the feet to cold vinegar to cover, adding one-third of the boiling water.

  2. Add whole pepper, allspice, cloves, and mace if desired, then cover tightly.

  3. Split the feet in two.

Serve

  1. Eat the feet cold from the vinegar.

  2. Dip the feet in wheat flour.

  3. Fry the feet 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

Feet
Provide the gelatinous flesh and bones that become tender through long gentle simmering.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves and sharpens the flavour of the pickled feet.
Wheat flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the surface brown when fried.
Hot lard
Fat that fries the floured surface, giving browning and rich flavour.
Whole pepper
Adds aromatic heat to the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the flesh breaks easily with a fork. Gentle simmering slowly converts tough connective tissue and collagen into tender, gelatinous meat. Boiling hard can break the skin and make the flesh ragged, so the bones loosen only when the feet are cooked low and slow.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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