Skip to main content
Main

Recipe for Head Cheese

A preserved meat aspic made from hog heads, cheek meat, and hocks, seasoned with pepper, allspice, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,077 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Recipe for Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 212°F (100°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure and cook the heads

  1. Soak cleaned hog heads in a pickle solution at 80% strength for 30 days at 40°F (4°C).

  2. Boil the cured heads for about 3 hours until the bones can be easily removed.

Grind and season

  1. Coarsely grind the meat, including heads, hocks, and cheek meat.

  2. Stuff the mixture into hog stomachs or beef bungs.

  3. Add allspice and thyme to the mixture if desired.

Cut, pack and process

  1. Cut the meat into ¾ to 1-inch dice and the tongues into strips.

  2. Process in cans by boiling in open water baths at 212°F (100°C) for the specified times.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Hog heads
Provide the main meat and collagen-rich connective tissue that gels as the head cheese cools.
Cheek meat or hocks
Add extra meat and gelatinous connective tissue that helps the mixture set firmly.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the meat throughout.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the seasoning.
Thyme
Adds herbal aroma that balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Boil the cured heads until the bones release. Boiling must run long enough for the bones to lift out cleanly, which shows the connective tissue has softened. Stopping early leaves hard bone fragments in the meat, while overcooking can make the meat fall apart and weaken the gel.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, thyme. 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.

More head cheese recipes

Calf's 5Pork 5Hogs 3Pig's 3 See all 91 →

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes