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Collared Head

A boiled pork head dish seasoned with saltpetre, sugar, and spices, then rolled and cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and allspice work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 272 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Collared Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the pork head thoroughly, especially the ears, and remove the brains and black parts of the eyes.

  2. Salt the head and tongue with coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and sugar; rub in well.

  3. Let sit for a week.

Boil and shape

  1. Boil the head until the meat separates from the bones and the skin from the tongue.

  2. Carefully remove the meat in large pieces.

  3. Arrange the meat to form a square.

  4. Slice the tongue in half.

  5. Position the tongue with the tips together.

  6. Spread the ears and feet meat open.

  7. Sprinkle white pepper, allspice, and a little salt over the meat.

  8. Roll the meat tightly in a cloth.

  9. Bind the cloth with broad tape.

  10. Boil for about three hours until tender.

  11. Press down with a weight.

  12. Let cool without removing the cloth.

Serve

  1. Slice to serve cold.

  2. Fry in batter.

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 + allspicetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pork + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Pork + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 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

Pork head
Forms the main body of the dish, with its skin, ears and tongue giving the collared meat its structure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the curing rub.
Saltpetre
Helps cured meat keep a stable pink colour and resists spoilage bacteria.
Coarse sugar
Balances the sharpness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the cure and letting it sit a week. Salt and curing salts must penetrate deep into the meat to preserve it and set its colour. Rubbing thoroughly and allowing the full week gives the cure time to work evenly; shallow or brief curing can leave uneven colour and poor keeping.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, allspice. 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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