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Mock Brawn

Mock Brawn is a pork belly and neats' feet mixture cooked, bound, and hung to set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Mock Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Rub the belly piece of pork well with saltpetre and let it sit for 2-3 days.

  2. Wash the pork belly piece clean.

  3. Boil the pork belly piece until nearly cooked.

Prepare the neats' feet

  1. Boil the neats' feet until tender.

  2. Remove all bones from the neats' feet.

Roll and bind

  1. Roll the neats' feet and belly piece tightly together.

  2. Bind the whole tightly with strong cloth and coarse tape.

Cook and hang

  1. Boil until completely tender.

  2. Hang it up without removing the string or cloth.

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

What each ingredient does

Belly piece of young pork
Forms the main body of the brawn and provides meat and fat that turn tender when simmered.
Saltpetre
Cures the pork, helping it keep its pink colour and giving it a characteristic cured flavour.
Neats' feet
Adds gelatine from connective tissue, which helps the finished brawn set firm when cooled.

The step that matters

Boil until completely tender. Connective tissue in the pork and neats' feet only breaks down into gelatine with long, gentle cooking. Stopping early leaves the meat tough and the set weak.

“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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