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Tonbridge Brawn

A preserved pig head dish made by curing, pickling, and braising the head, ears, and feet with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tonbridge Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Split open the pig's head and remove the brain and bones.

  2. Strew the inside with coarse sea salt and let it drain overnight.

  3. Clean the ears and feet, wipe off the brine, and place them in a large pan.

  4. Rub the ears and feet with saltpetre mixed with sugar.

  5. After 12 hours, add salt to the ears and feet.

  6. Pour vinegar over them the next day.

  7. Turn the ears and feet in the pickle every 24 hours for a week.

Prepare the ears and feet

  1. Wash the ears and feet.

  2. Boil the ears and feet for about 1.5 hours.

  3. Bone the feet while warm and trim the gristle from the ears.

Form the head

  1. Mix grated nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and cloves.

  2. Wash the head without soaking, wipe it, and flatten it on a board.

  3. Cut some flesh from the thickest parts of the head.

  4. Season the meat with spices.

  5. Intermix the head meat with the ears and feet.

  6. Roll the mixture tightly and bind with tape.

  7. Wrap the roll in a pudding cloth and tie securely at both ends.

Simmer

  1. Place the wrapped roll in a braising pan or suitable vessel with bones, herbs, onions, celery, carrots, and peppercorns, then cover with cold water.

  2. Boil gently for 4 hours.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat, giving it a firm texture and a pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat during curing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickled ears and feet.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the spiced meat.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling hard. A vigorous boil toughens the meat and can break the cloth-wrapped roll apart. Gentle heat lets the collagen in the head and feet slowly soften into a tender, sliceable set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper, clove, onion, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, pepper, clove, onion, celery. 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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