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Pig's Cheek, M. Soyer's Mode of Cooking
Take a nicely-pickled pig's cheek. Let it boil gently until it is quite tender. Tie half a pint of good split peas loosely in a cloth, put them into boiling water, and boil them for an hour; then take them out, pass them through a hair sieve, and mix with the pulp a little pepper and salt, an ounce of butter, and four well-beaten eggs. Stir the mixture over the fire until the eggs begin to set, then spread it upon the cheek, brush over with beaten egg, sprinkle bread raspings on it, put it in the oven a few minutes, and serve. Time, two hours and a half to boil the cheek. Probable cost of cheek, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A boiled and coated pig's jowl, finished with what is essentially a pease-pudding custard. Most of the work is timing the two components so the pea mixture is still warm and spreadable when the cheek comes out of the pot.
- The hinge: stop stirring earlyThe pea and egg mixture should be taken off the heat as soon as it begins to thicken and hold a line behind the spoon. Carried further it curdles into scrambled egg and will not spread smoothly over the cheek.
- Pickled pig's cheekThis means a jowl cured in brine, bought ready-pickled from the butcher, not fresh pork. It is usually very salty: soak it in cold water for several hours or overnight, changing the water once, before cooking.
- "Boil gently" means simmerA true rolling boil toughens and shreds the meat. Hold the water at a bare tremble; two and a half hours is a fair guide for a whole jowl, but test with a skewer, which should meet no resistance.
- Half a pint of split peasAn imperial half-pint of dried peas is roughly a generous cup, about 8 oz. Yellow or green both work; yellow is the traditional choice for pease pudding.
- The pudding clothPeas were tied loosely in a cloth, presumably so they could be lifted out in one piece; the recipe does not say why. Simmering them loose in water and draining well is simpler; loose peas take about 45-60 minutes to collapse.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve, the usual fine sieve before cheap wire mesh; it is sometimes said metal was avoided for fear of discolouring the pulp. A food mill, a sturdy mesh sieve or a brief go in a processor all do the job.
- Bread raspingsDried crusts grated to a coarse powder, the Victorian equivalent of dry breadcrumbs. Ordinary dried breadcrumbs, or panko, give the same crust.
- "A few minutes" in the ovenThe purpose is only to set the egg glaze and colour the crumbs. The recipe gives no oven heat; a hot oven for about 8-10 minutes, or a short pass under the grill, is enough.
- YieldThe recipe claims eight to ten portions, which assumes a whole jowl served as one dish among several. Served as a main course with vegetables, a single cheek would more realistically stretch to four to six.
Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) was chef at the Reform Club in London and the most publicly visible cook of his generation: he devised soup kitchens during the Irish famine, reorganised army cooking in the Crimea, and wrote books aimed squarely at frugal households, among them A Shilling Cookery for the People. Cassell's, compiling its dictionary decades later, still traded on his name, and this dish is characteristic of him taking a cheap cured cut and dressing it up with something substantial and inexpensive. Pig's cheek, or jowl, was among the least costly pieces of a pig, and pease pudding was its long-standing companion in English cooking; Soyer's contribution is to enrich the peas with butter and egg and use them as a coating rather than a side, turning a boiled-bacon supper into something that could be carried to table whole.