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Head Cheese

A cold meat jelly made from boiled hog head, salted and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Thoroughly clean the hog's head, removing the eyes, brains, and ears.

  2. Pour scalding water over the head, then rinse in cold water.

  3. Place the head in a large kettle with hot water to cover and bring to a gentle boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Once the bones can be easily removed, take the head out and chop the meat small, discarding all bones.

Press and set

  1. Season the chopped meat with salt, pepper, and optional herbs.

  2. Line a colander with a cloth, place it in a deep dish, and add the meat.

  3. Fold the cloth over the meat and place a weight on top to press it down.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Remove the weight and cloth.

  6. Scrape off any fat on the outside.

  7. Store the cheese in the cloth in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Serve sliced thin with mustard, vinegar, or catsup.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hog's head
Provides the meat, skin and connective tissue that gel as the head cools and set the cheese.

The step that matters

Pressing the chopped meat while it cools. Pressing under a weight packs the meat into a compact mass so that slices hold together. Cooling under pressure lets the gelatin from the bones and skin set the pieces into one firm block.

“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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