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Head Cheese and Cooking Liquor

A preserved meat jelly made from hog head, heart, and cheek meat, seasoned and set in its own cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Head Cheese and Cooking Liquor

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meats

  1. Cook the hog's head, heart, and cheek meat until thoroughly done but not overdone, until the bones come away freely.

Season and press

  1. Chop the meats coarsely and mix thoroughly with salt, white pepper, ground cloves, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Stuff the mixture into hog stomachs and apply pressure until thoroughly chilled.

Save the liquor

  1. Save the cooking liquor to make gelatine; do not waste it.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White pepper + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. White pepper + clovetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together752 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + clovetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hog's cheek meat
Adds lean meat that binds the chopped mixture into a sliceable texture.
Hog's head
Supplies bones, skin and connective tissue that release gelatine during cooking.
Hog's heart
Adds dense meat and connective tissue that contributes to body and gelatine.
Fine salt
Seasons the meat and draws out moisture, helping the mixture hold together.

The step that matters

Cook until the bones come away freely, not past that point. Overcooking breaks down the meat and makes the texture mushy, while undercooking leaves connective tissue unable to release gelatine that holds the set head cheese together.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, clove, 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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