Skip to main content
Main

Brawn Made of Pig’s Head

A preserved meat product made from pig's head, saltpetre, salt, sugar, spices, and chilled after pressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brawn Made of Pig’s Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Split the pig's head and remove the brains and ears.

  2. Sprinkle the head with common salt and let it sit for a day.

  3. Drain the head and salt it well with common salt and saltpetre for three days.

  4. Soak the salted head in a little water for two days.

Cook and set

  1. Wash the head and boil it until the bones come out.

  2. Skin the head and tongue, then chop them finely.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and mace or allspice.

  4. Press the mixture into a dish or mold and refrigerate until cold.

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

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

  2. Mace + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Saltpetre
Gives the meat its pink curing colour and helps preserve it during the salting.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while it cures.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and softens the savoury flavour of the cured meat.

The step that matters

Boil until the bones come out. Cooking long enough softens the connective tissue and collagen so the meat breaks down and sets firmly when pressed and chilled. Stopping early leaves the brawn tough and loose.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, mace. 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

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