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Head-cheese

Head cheese is a meat jelly made from pig head, feet, and other parts, seasoned and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and buckwheat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Head-cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean the head, feet, and bony pieces.

  2. Boil them with the sausage meat until tender.

  3. Remove the bones.

  4. Chop the meat finely in a chopping bowl.

  5. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and sweet herbs.

  6. Place the mixture in a bag and weigh it down.

  7. Let it cool until cold.

Make the jelly

  1. Save the boiling liquid.

  2. Strain the liquid to remove bones.

  3. Remove some fat from the liquid.

  4. Pour the liquid back into the kettle.

  5. Add 2 quarts of chopped meat for every 6 quarts of liquid.

  6. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Stir in Indian meal or buckwheat flour until thick like hasty pudding.

Serve

  1. Cut into slices.

  2. Fry in enough fat to cook itself.

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 + buckwheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Meat + buckwheattop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Head of a pig
Provides meat and collagen-rich connective tissue that gives the set jelly its body.
Feet of a pig
Supply gelatin-rich connective tissue that helps the cooking liquid set into a firm jelly.
Sausage meat
Adds seasoned fat and meat flavour to the chopped meat in the set jelly.
Indian meal or buckwheat flour
Thickens the boiling liquid into a porridge-like mass that holds the meat together.

The step that matters

Stir in the meal until thick like hasty pudding. Cornmeal or buckwheat flour swells as it heats and thickens the liquid quickly. Adding it too fast or too little leaves lumps or a thin mixture that will not hold its shape when sliced.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Buckwheatthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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