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Brawn, Ormskirk

A savory meat jelly made from pig head, ears, feet, and tongues, seasoned and set in moulds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brawn, Ormskirk

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and prepare

  1. Soak the pig's head, ears, and feet in pickle No. 2 for 5 days, turning daily.

  2. Rinse and dry the meat.

Cook and season

  1. Boil until the bones slip out.

  2. Skin the tongues.

  3. Chop all the meat into small pieces.

  4. Season the meat with black pepper, ground nutmeg, sage, and a pinch of cayenne.

  5. Reduce the cooking liquid to about 1 cup.

Set in moulds

  1. Stir some of the liquid into the meat in a saucepan and heat until hot.

  2. Pour the mixture into moulds or basins.

  3. Let it firm up.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig head, ears and feet
Provide gelatine-rich connective tissue that sets the broth into a firm jelly as it cools.
Pig tongues
Add rich, meaty flavour and tender texture to the chopped meat.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent warmth that balances the rich pork flavour.
Ground nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic sweetness that complements the pork.
Sage
Adds earthy, herbal aroma that suits the richness of the pork.

The step that matters

Reduce the cooking liquid to about 1 cup. The liquid must be concentrated enough to set firmly when cooled. Gelatine released from bones and skin forms a gel only when the broth is strong, so a weak reduction may fail to firm up.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sage. 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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