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Collared Head

A boiled pig head rolled with ears, seasoned with salt, saltpetre, and white pepper, then bound and cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and pork work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 791 recipes. Both carry methyl butyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Collared Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Scour the head and ears, removing hair, snout, eyes, and brain.

  2. Soak the head in water overnight, then drain and salt it well with coarse sea salt and saltpetre for five days.

Cook and shape

  1. Boil the head until bones are easily removed.

  2. Shape the head into a roll, sprinkle with salt and white pepper, and roll with the ears.

  3. Bind the roll in a cloth and tape, then boil until tender.

Press and cool

  1. Place a weight on it and let it cool without removing the covering.

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. White pepper + porktop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a pink cured colour during the salting period.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long salting period.
White pepper
Adds mild, sharp seasoning to the outside of the rolled head.

The step that matters

Binding the roll in a cloth and tape. The roll must be bound firmly so it holds its shape while boiling and cooling. Loose binding lets the meat spread and gives an uneven, crumbly collar.

“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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