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Bath Chap, to Cook
The excellence of this well-prepared meat depends greatly on the soaking and boiling. If these be not properly attended to, it will be hard and unsatisfactory. Lay it in a pail of cold water, skin downwards, and let it remain one night. Scrub the chap with a small brush to cleanse it; put it into plenty of cold water to boil; make it come to a boil quickly, and then draw the pan aside to simmer. Time to simmer, from two to three hours, according to size. Skin, and garnish with any boiled green vegetable. Probable cost, 9d. per pound.
A bath chap is the cured lower jaw and cheek of a pig, sold ready-salted; this page assumes you already have one and only tells you how to bring it to the table. Almost everything that can go wrong happens in the first two steps.
- What to buyButchers rarely stock bath chaps by that name now. Ask for a cured (brined or dry-salted) pig's cheek or jowl, on the bone; a single chap runs roughly 1 to 2 lb. The recipe does not say whether the chap is smoked or unsmoked; smoked jowl bacon will be saltier and will want a longer soak.
- The overnight soak is not optionalNineteenth-century chaps were cured hard enough to keep for weeks, and the soak is what makes them edible. Modern cures are milder, so 8-12 hours in cold water is generally ample; if the cheek is heavily salted, change the water once. Refrigerate rather than leaving a pail on the floor overnight.
- "Come to a boil quickly, then draw the pan aside"This is the hinge. Bring it up briskly, then hold the water at a bare shiver, around 180F, with the surface barely trembling. A rolling boil for two hours renders the fat out and shrinks the meat into something stringy and dry.
- Timing and donenessTwo to three hours suits a 1-2 lb chap. Judge by feel rather than the clock: a skewer should slide into the thickest part of the cheek with no resistance, and the small jaw bone should pull clean.
- SkinningPeel the skin off while the chap is still hot — it lifts away in one piece and becomes stubborn as it cools. The traditional finish, which Cassell leaves unsaid, is to press the skinned chap under a weight, coat the fat side with toasted breadcrumbs, and serve it cold in slices.
- Garnish"Any boiled green vegetable" meant cabbage, greens or broad beans. Cheek is very fatty meat; something sharp alongside — mustard, pickled walnuts, a vinegared salad — does more for it than plain greens.
- The price note9d. per pound is ninepence in pre-decimal currency. Cassell quotes costs throughout so a housekeeper could budget; the figure is of no use as a price today.
- YieldOne chap of about 1.5 lb serves two to three hot, or four to six as a cold sliced dish.
The bath chap is often said to take its name from the city of Bath, though the etymology is traditional rather than documented, and it is generally traced to the West Country bacon-curing trade, where pigs were slaughtered in quantity and every part sold. The cheek was among the cheapest pieces on the carcass, cured alongside the flitches and sold to households that could not run to a ham, which is why Cassell's gives it a bare paragraph and a price per pound rather than any ceremony. It survived into the twentieth century as a cold-slab item in provision shops, breadcrumbed and cone-shaped; the recent revival of nose-to-tail cookery has brought cured pig's cheek back to butchers' counters, usually under its plainer name.