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Souse Cheese

A dish of boiled pork head and ears seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Souse Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Soak the meat in cold water for several days, changing the water daily and scraping the meat each time.

  2. If the weather is warm, add a little coarse sea salt to the water.

  3. Boil the meat in enough water to cover it until tender.

  4. Transfer the meat to milk-warm water.

  5. Transfer the meat to salt water until thoroughly cold.

Cook the head and ears

  1. Boil the head until the bones are about to separate from the meat.

  2. Scrape the ears until very white.

  3. Boil the ears.

Set and serve

  1. Chop the meat and ears very finely.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  3. Place the mixture in a bowl.

  4. Weigh the mixture down.

  5. Slice the mixture.

  6. Serve with vinegar.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Meat + vinegartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,428 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat (head and ears)
Forms the body of the dish; the cooked, chopped meat sets into a sliceable mass.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the rich, fatty meat and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Weigh the mixture down. Pressing the chopped meat while it cools lets it bind and set into a firm mass that can be sliced cleanly. Pressing too little leaves a crumbly texture.

“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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