Skip to main content
Main

Brawn

A preserved meat jelly made from pig parts, seasoned and set in a brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Prepare the pickle by pouring 2 gallons of boiling water over 6 lbs. of salt and let it cool.

  2. Add 1 lb. of saltpetre, 1 oz. of bay salt, and ½ lb. of brown sugar to the cooled brine and mix thoroughly.

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

Cook and press

  1. Boil the meat slowly for seven hours, with the head for less than four hours.

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

  3. Season the meat with mixed spice and black pepper.

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

  5. 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 + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Pig's head
Provides gelatin-rich connective tissue that sets the cheese as it cools.
Pig's feet
Supply collagen, which releases gelatin during long boiling to help the mass set firmly.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, giving it a pink colour and a firm, cured texture.
Brown sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the salty cure.

The step that matters

Boil the meat slowly for seven hours, with the head for less than four hours.. Long, gentle simmering breaks down collagen into gelatin, which sets the cheese. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen the meat or dissolve it into a loose broth, so the head is removed earlier.

“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.

More head cheese recipes

Calf's 5Pork 5Hogs 3Pig's 3 See all 91 →

You might also like

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