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A Collar of Brawn

A collar of brawn is a boiled pork dish made from a pig's head, feet, and ears, salted and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,478 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

A Collar of Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and clean the pig’s head, feet, and ears thoroughly.

  2. Soak them in a mixture of salt and water with saltpetre for 3 hours.

Cook and press

  1. Boil the ox-heels with the head, feet, and ears until the bones can be easily removed.

  2. Arrange the head around a mold and place the feet and small pieces in the center.

  3. Press it together while hot and weigh it down until it cools.

  4. Boil in enough liquid to cover the brawn for 30 minutes with salt, black and white pepper, and bay leaves.

  5. Once cooled, pour the liquid over the brawn.

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 + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pig’s head
Provides the gelatinous meat and bone structure that sets the brawn when cooled.
Pig’s feet
Supply collagen that releases gelatin during long boiling, helping the brawn set firm.
Ox-heels
Add extra collagen, enriching the cooking liquid so it gels as it cools.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour and adds a cured flavour during soaking.

The step that matters

Pressing the brawn while hot. Meat pressed while still hot binds together as the gelatin cools and sets. If it cools unpressed, the pieces separate and the slices will crumble.

“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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