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Mock Brawn

A boiled meat mixture of ox feet and pork belly, seasoned with wheat bran, bay, rosemary, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rosemary share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mock Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Boil the ox feet until tender, then remove the meat from the ox feet.

  2. Boil the belly piece of pork until tender, then remove the bones from the pork.

  3. Roll the pork tightly with the ox feet.

Cook and set

  1. Boil both together until tender.

  2. Hang the mixture in cloth until cold.

Make the liquor and finish

  1. Boil the wheat bran, bay, rosemary, and salt in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Let it cool before using.

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. Wheat + rosemarytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Pork + wheattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Pork + rosemarytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together656 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Ox feet
Provide gelatin that helps the mixture set firm when cooled.
Belly piece of pork
Adds fat and meaty body, giving the brawn richness and texture.
Wheat bran
Simmered in the liquor to add flavour and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Hang the mixture in cloth until cold. Gelatin from the ox feet only sets as the mixture cools. Keeping the meats tightly rolled and cooling them fully lets the gelatin bind the pieces into a firm, sliceable mould.

Swap the rosemary

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, wheat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Rosemarythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, wheat. 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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