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Brawn, with Brawn Sauce

A dish made from boiled pig's head, cut into pieces, simmered with spices, then set in a mold to firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brawn, with Brawn Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head

  1. Boil the pig's head until the flesh can be removed from the bones.

  2. Lift the head out, remove the bones, skin the tongue, bone the ears, and cut all into small pieces.

  3. Put the bones back into the saucepan with 2 pints of the boiling liquid.

  4. Add the sliced onion, mace, cloves, allspice, peppercorns, bay leaves, and thyme.

  5. Bring to a boil, then remove the lid and boil quickly for 30 minutes, until half a pint has evaporated.

Make the set

  1. Strain the stock, return it to the saucepan with the cut meat, and boil again.

  2. Taste and season if necessary.

  3. Pour into a wet mold and let it stand until firm.

  4. Turn out onto a dish and garnish with parsley.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's head
Provides the meat and natural gelatin that set the head cheese once the stock cools.
Bones (in the method)
Release gelatin into the liquid during boiling, giving the stock the body needed to set.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock. Boiling off about half a pint concentrates the gelatin and flavor. If the stock is too dilute, the mold will not firm up properly when it cools.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, allspice, thyme, parsley, beef):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, allspice, thyme, parsley, beef. 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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