Skip to main content
Main

Tonbridge Brawn

A preserved pork head with ears and feet, seasoned with saltpetre, sugar, spices, and boiled with herbs and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tonbridge Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Split open the pork head, remove the brain and bones, sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt, and let it drain overnight.

  2. Clean the ears and feet, wipe off the brine, and place them in a large pan.

  3. Rub the ears and feet with a mixture of saltpetre and sugar.

  4. After 12 hours, add coarse sea salt to the ears and feet.

  5. Pour vinegar over the ears and feet, turning them in the pickle every 24 hours for a week.

  6. Wash off the pickle, then boil the ears and feet for about 1.5 hours.

  7. Bone the feet while warm and trim the gristle from the ears.

Season and roll

  1. Mix grated nutmeg, mace, cayenne, and cloves.

  2. Wash the head without soaking it, then wipe and flatten it.

  3. Cut some flesh from the thickest parts of the head and season all the meat with the spice mixture.

  4. Layer the seasoned meat with the ears and feet, roll it tightly, and bind it with broad tape.

  5. Wrap it in a thin pudding cloth and tie securely at both ends.

Boil

  1. Place the head with bones and trimmings, herbs, onions, celery, carrots, and peppercorns in a braising pan or suitable vessel.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil gently for 4 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 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

Pork head
Forms the bulk of the brawn, supplying meat and gelatinous connective tissue that sets as it cools.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, keeping it pink and firm while preserving it during the long pickling.
Sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and softens the savour of the meat.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickle, helping to preserve and sharpen the flavour of the ears and feet.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavours the meat.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 4 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and lets collagen from the bones and feet break down into gelatine, which sets the brawn. A hard boil toughens the meat and can break up the head.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, mace, pepper, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, mace, pepper, clove. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes