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Soused Pig's Feet

A pickled pig's feet dish simmered with vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pig's Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Scald and clean the pig's feet, then wash them.

  2. Boil the feet in enough water to cover them, adding 2 teaspoons of salt per quart of water.

  3. Cook until the bones are loose and the flesh is nearly falling apart.

Make the pickle

  1. Remove the feet and let them cool on a dish, saving the cooking liquid.

  2. Mix equal parts of the cooking liquid and vinegar, adding whole allspice, cloves, pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Heat the vinegar mixture and pour it over the cooled feet.

Serve

  1. Serve cold or reheat with some of the vinegar mixture.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's feet
Provide gelatinous collagen and meat that softens during long simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickled feet.
Salt
Seasons the cooking water and the pickle, bringing out flavour in the meat.

The step that matters

Cook until the bones are loose and the flesh is nearly falling apart. Collagen in the connective tissue only converts to soft gelatin after prolonged simmering. Stopping early leaves the feet tough and the bones stubbornly attached.

“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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