Skip to main content
Main

Brawn

Brawn is a preserved pig head dish made by pickling and curing pig parts in a seasoned brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Prepare the pickle by pouring 2 gallons of boiling water over 6 lbs. of coarse sea salt, then add 1 lb. of pounded saltpetre, 1 oz. of bay salt, and ½ lb. of brown sugar when cold.

Cure and cook

  1. Rub the pig's head, feet, ears, and tongue with pickle for six days.

  2. Boil the pig's head for less than four hours and the feet for nearly seven hours.

  3. Remove all meat and gristle from the bones and cut or tear into suitable pieces.

  4. Season the meat with mixed spice and pepper.

Press and set

  1. Line a 9x7 inch perforated tin with skin, layer the meat and tongue pieces inside.

  2. Cover with a cloth and place a 7 lb. weight on top for 24 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the pickle cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing.
Brown sugar
Balances the saltiness of the pickle and adds a mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the pig's head and feet for the stated times. Boiling for too long can make the meat fall apart, while too short a time leaves connective tissue tough. The feet need a much longer cook than the head to soften their gelatinous collagen.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, sage, onion. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes