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Boar's Head Galantines

A dish of pig heads stuffed with tongue, sausage, and pickled rind, then boiled and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Boar's Head Galantines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heads

  1. Bone the large pig's head, cutting back to the shoulder bones without piercing the skin.

  2. Remove the tongues and place both heads in corned beef brine for 2-3 days.

  3. Wash and trim the heads, removing excess fat from the jowls.

Stuff and wrap

  1. Sew up the mouth and throat of the large head.

  2. Place the small head inside the large one, filling with tongue strips and sausage meat.

  3. Cover the neck with pickled pork rind and sew the stuffed head in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 4-5 hours, then press in a suitable mold and let cool.

  2. Remove the cloth, take out the threads, and slice to serve.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

  3. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef brine
Cures and seasons the heads over 2-3 days, flavouring the meat and firming its texture.
Well-seasoned pork sausage meat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the stuffed head.
Pickled pork rind
Covers the neck, adding savoury, tangy flavour and a gelatinous texture when cooked.

The step that matters

Boiling and pressing the stuffed head. Boiling for the full 4-5 hours breaks down collagen in the skin and connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender and gelatinous. Pressing while cooling helps the pieces bind into a firm, sliceable loaf.

“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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