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Mock Brawn

A stuffed tripe dish made with boiled meats, spices, and saltpetre, then boiled and pressed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mock Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe

  1. Thoroughly cleanse the tripe with coarse sea salt and wash in many waters.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the gristle from the boiled neat's feet, and chop the pigs' tongues, bacon cheek, bacon ears, streaky flap of pork, and grisken into square pieces.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped meat with the saltpetre and let it sit for 1-2 hours.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, black pepper, and allspice, then stuff it into the tripe.

Boil and press

  1. Roll the stuffed tripe in a cloth and bind it tightly with tape.

  2. Boil the wrapped brawn for 4 hours.

  3. After boiling, do not remove the cloth; tighten the tape and let it hang until cold with a large weight attached.

  4. Press it in a round mold for a night or more, then remove the 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

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and giving a firm, seasoned texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the filling moist during long boiling.
Pork
Supplies the main meat and fat that bind the filling into a sliceable mass.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aromatic heat that balances the rich, fatty meat.

The step that matters

Tightening the tape and pressing while cold. The wrapped brawn must stay tightly bound and weighted as it cools, so the gelatine from the gristle and rind sets and the meat compacts into a firm, sliceable block instead of crumbling.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pork, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pork, pepper. 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.

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