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Pig's Head Brawn

A thickened broth made from a pig's head, spices, onions, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pig's Head Brawn

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash the pig's head thoroughly and discard the brains.

  2. Soak the head in a brine solution for three days, then wash it again.

  3. Place the head in a large saucepan and cover it with cold water.

Make the broth

  1. Simmer for two hours, then remove the head and separate the meat from the bones, cutting it into small pieces.

  2. Return the bones to the saucepan, add the spices, onions, and herbs, and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the broth and return it to the saucepan with the meat, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  4. Boil for a few minutes, then pour into molds and let set before turning out.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 meat, bones and gelatin-rich connective tissue that give the broth its body and set.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Whole peppercorns
Release warm, pungent aroma into the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer for two hours, then separate the meat from the bones. Long, gentle simmering at a low bubble extracts collagen from the bones and connective tissue, which turns into gelatin that lets the broth set. Boiling hard can cloud the broth and toughen the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, allspice, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, parsley. 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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