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Head Cheese

Head cheese is a cold cut made from boiled pig head meat, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Head Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Thoroughly clean the hog's head.

  2. Split the head in two with a sharp knife.

  3. Remove the eyes, brains, and ears.

  4. Pour scalding water over them and the head.

  5. Scrape them clean.

  6. Cut off any discolored parts of the nose.

  7. Rinse everything in cold water.

Cook the meat

  1. Place the head in a large kettle.

  2. Cover with hot (not boiling) water.

  3. Boil gently.

  4. Skim off the scum.

  5. Remove the head with a skimmer into a large bowl.

  6. Remove all bones.

  7. Chop the meat finely.

  8. Season with salt, pepper, and optional herbs.

Press and set

  1. Line a colander or sieve with a cloth.

  2. Place it over a deep dish.

  3. Add the meat.

  4. Fold the cloth over the meat.

  5. Place a weight on top to press it down.

  6. Let it cool.

  7. Remove the weight and the cheese from the colander.

  8. Scrape off any fat from the outside of the cloth.

  9. Store the cheese in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Serve sliced thin, with or without mustard, vinegar, or catsup.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hog's head
Provides the meat and gelatin-rich connective tissue that bind the chopped meat into a firm loaf.
Water
Gently extracts collagen and flavor from the head, which later cools to a jelly that holds the meat together.

The step that matters

Boil gently. Boiling hard toughens the meat and breaks up the head, while a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and lets collagen dissolve slowly, which is what later sets the cheese.

“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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