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Head Cheese

A savory meat jelly made from pigs' feet, hocks, onion, spices, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Head Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Clean and cut the pigs' feet and hocks into pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a large pot and cover with cold water.

  3. Cook until the hocks are very tender.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove the hocks, chop the meat into small pieces, discarding the fat.

  2. Add the onion to the pot and let the pigs' feet cook down.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Mix the strained liquid with the chopped hock meat.

  5. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, cinnamon, and cloves.

  6. Return everything to the pot and simmer for a few minutes.

  7. Stir in sherry to taste.

  8. Pour the mixture into molds.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + clovetop 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

Pigs' feet
Their collagen and gelatin release into the cooking liquid, helping the mixture set as it cools.
Hocks
Their tender meat and connective tissue form the chopped body of the dish and add savory richness.
Onion
Its sugars and aromatic compounds add a mellow background flavor to the cooking liquid.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich, meaty flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the hocks until very tender. Collagen in the connective tissue only breaks down into gelatin after long, gentle cooking. If the meat is undercooked, the liquid will not set properly and the texture will be tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, clove, sherry. 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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