Why it works: Pork and rosemary work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 656 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Mock Brawn
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the pork
Rub the belly-piece of pork with saltpetre and let it sit for 2-3 days.
Wash the belly-piece clean and boil it until nearly cooked.
Roll and cook
Boil the neats'-feet until tender, remove the bones, and roll them with the belly-piece tightly.
Bind the rolled meat with a strong cloth and coarse tape, then boil until tender.
Hang it up without removing the string or cloth.
Pickle and serve
Prepare a souse pickle by boiling bran, rosemary, bay leaves, and coarse sea salt in water for 20 minutes, then strain it.
Once cold, submerge the mock brawn in the pickle.
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.
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Pork + rosemarytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together656 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
- Belly-piece of young pork
- Forms the main body of the meat and, once cooked, gives the brawn its substance.
- Saltpetre
- Cures the pork, helping it keep its pink colour and firm texture during the resting period.
- Neats'-feet
- Adds gelatinous connective tissue that helps the rolled meat bind and set firmly.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the souse pickle and helps preserve the meat it surrounds.
The step that matters
Boil the neats'-feet until tender. Neats'-feet must be cooked fully so their collagen softens into gelatin, which helps the rolled meat hold together. Undercooked feet will leave the roll loose and tough.
“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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