Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
English Brawn in Cans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Split and thoroughly wash the hog's heads and shank or cheek meat.
Cure the meat in a pickle solution at 80°F for 30 days in a cool place.
Boil the cured meat for 3 hours and remove it from the bones.
Grind the meat mixture using a sausage grinder, maintaining a ratio of 75% heads to 25% shank or cheek meat.
Add 12 oz. of black pepper for every 100 lbs. of meat.
Can and process
Stuff the mixture into square cans of various sizes (1 lb, 2 lb, 6 lb, and 14 lb).
Process the cans in a water bath at 212°F: boil 1 lb cans for 2 hours, 2 lb cans for 2.5 hours, 6 lb cans for 4.5 hours, and 14 lb cans for 2.5 hours.
Open the vents during boiling, then stop them and continue boiling for the specified times.
After processing, cool the cans by spraying them with cold water to assist in venting.
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.
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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hogs' heads
- Provide the gelatinous connective tissue that helps the brawn set firm when cooled.
- Shank meat or cheek meat
- Adds lean meat and body so the finished brawn holds together in slices.
- Coarse sea salt
- Cures the meat in the pickle, seasoning it and firming its texture.
- Black pepper
- Adds sharp aromatic flavour that balances the richness of the meat.
The step that matters
Venting the cans during boiling. Trapped air and steam can build pressure inside sealed cans, so the vents must be opened during boiling and closed only as directed, with time kept for each can size.
“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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