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Potted Head

A boiled pig's head seasoned with spices and salt, served as a savory dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Soak the pig's head pieces in cold water with 1 cup of coarse sea salt and ½ teaspoon of saltpetre overnight.

  2. Remove the eyes, ears, and nose from the head pieces.

  3. Singe and scrape off all hair from the head and feet.

  4. Wash the head pieces and scrape them.

Cook

  1. Boil the head pieces until the meat falls from the bones, adding 1 tablespoon of salt while boiling.

  2. Tie the spices (cloves, allspice, peppercorns, chillies, bay leaves, and onion) in cheesecloth.

  3. Boil the tied spices with the meat, or use just the onion with sage, salt, and pepper.

  4. Once cooked, separate the meat from the broth, discarding bones and gristle.

Set and pot

  1. Place the meat in a bowl to cool and let the broth cool in another vessel.

  2. Remove the fat from the top of the broth.

  3. Heat the broth.

  4. Cut the meat into dice.

  5. Combine the diced meat with the broth and heat through without boiling.

  6. Season with additional salt and pepper if needed.

  7. Pour into wet bowls to cool.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's head
Provides the meat and gelatinous connective tissue that set the potted mixture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture from the meat and seasons it during the overnight soak.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour and adds a cured flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Boiling the diced meat again toughens its proteins and can make it dry and stringy. Gentle heating keeps the texture tender while the broth warms through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, sage, 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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