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Cheese Souse

A pork head and jowl jelly seasoned with spices and thickened with the cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Cheese Souse

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Boil the fresh head and jowl with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and onion until the meat is tender.

  2. Cut the meat into thin slices.

  3. Skin and strain the cooking liquid.

Make the jelly

  1. Season the liquid with allspice, cloves, pounded thyme, and a little red pepper.

  2. Return the meat to the pot with the seasoned liquid and boil down to a thick jelly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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

Fresh head
Provides collagen from the bones and skin that sets the cooking liquid into a jelly.
Jowl
Adds fat and meat that give the set jelly body and flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Boil down to a thick jelly. The liquid must reduce enough for its natural gelatin to set when cooled. Too little reduction leaves a loose mixture that will not hold its shape in the mold.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, clove, 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.

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