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Mock Brawn

A rolled pork and calf's feet dish seasoned with mace, cloves, cayenne pepper, served with oil, vinegar, mustard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Mock Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Boil the calf's feet until tender.

  2. Remove the bones from the calf's feet.

  3. Boil the belly-piece of pork.

  4. Season the pork with mace, cloves, and Cayenne pepper when cold.

Roll and braise

  1. Spread forcemeat on the pork.

  2. Place the calf's feet on top of the pork.

  3. Roll the pork and calf's feet up.

  4. Tie the rolled meat with tape.

  5. Wrap it in a cloth, tying the ends.

  6. Braise the wrapped roll until tender.

Press and serve

  1. Press the roll with a board and weight.

  2. Serve the cold roll with oil, vinegar, mustard, and a little sugar in a butter boat.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Their gelatin-rich connective tissue sets the brawn as it cools and binds the meat together.
Belly-piece of pork
Its fat and meat form the body of the roll and add moisture and richness.
Forcemeat (in the method)
Spread over the pork, it fills the layers and adds moisture and flavour to the roll.

The step that matters

Braise the wrapped roll until tender. Long, gentle moist heat breaks down collagen in the calf's feet into gelatin, which is what lets the roll set firm when cold. Undercooking leaves the meat tough and the brawn loose.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, clove, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sugar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, clove, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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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