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Pig's Head, Piquant
Take a fresh pig's head, singe and clean it carefully. Lay it in a pickling-pan, with a dessert-spoonful of common salt, half a dozen cloves, one or two bay-leaves, a salt-spoonful of peppercorns, a salt-spoonful of bruised juniper-berries, two sliced onions, and half a lemon, thinly sliced. Pour half a pint of vinegar over the whole, let it lie for five days, turning and basting the head and rubbing in the spices at least once each day. Take it up, drain and dry it, brush it over with clarified butter, and place it in a stewpan over a moderate fire until it is lightly browned all over. Pour in the marinade, leaving out most of the lemon, and add a cupful of water. Put the lid on the saucepan, steam the meat gently for an hour and a half, and while it is being cooked baste it two or three times with the liquid. Put the head on a hot dish. Skim and strain the sauce and send it to table in a tureen. Time, five days to lie in the marinade; a quarter of an hour to colour the head; one hour and a half to steam it. Probable cost, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A whole fresh pig's head, marinated in spiced vinegar and then braised in its own marinade. Nothing here is difficult, but two things in the original need correcting: where the head sits for those five days, and how long it actually needs to cook.
- Refrigerate the marinadeFive days in a cool Victorian larder is five days in the refrigerator now. Half a pint of vinegar and two teaspoons of salt is a flavouring bath, not a cure, and it will not protect several pounds of fresh pork at room temperature. Use a non-reactive tub or a heavy bag, and keep it at or below 40F the whole time.
- The cooking time is shortAn hour and a half will not render the collagen in a pig's head. Expect three to four hours of gentle covered simmering before the cheek meat, ear and snout are properly tender and the skin yields to a fork. The liquid should barely tremble; hard boiling shreds the cheeks and clouds the sauce.
- Buying the headOrder it from a butcher a week ahead and ask for it split, with the brain removed and the eyes taken out. Confirm whether the tongue is in. A split head also fits an ordinary stockpot, which a whole one will not.
- SingeingButchers now scald and scrape heads, so heavy bristle is rare. Any remaining hairs come off over a gas flame or with a kitchen blowtorch, followed by a scrub under cold running water; check the ear folds and around the snout.
- UnitsA dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons; a salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon. Half a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, roughly 1 1/4 US cups. A "pickling-pan" is simply a non-metallic or glazed vessel deep enough to hold the head and its liquid.
- "A moderate fire"For the browning stage, medium heat on the hob — the clarified butter should sizzle without smoking. This step is for colour only; fifteen minutes is enough.
- The sauceOnce strained, the cooking liquor is sharp and gelatinous. Skim the fat well, and taste before serving — you may want to slacken it with a little stock or water.
- ServingEight or nine portions is realistic only if you carve properly: cheeks, tongue, the meat around the jaw, and the ear cut into strips. Serve very hot, as pork head meat sets quickly. Leftovers press beautifully into brawn with a little of the strained liquor.
Pig's head was one of the cheapest cuts in the Victorian butcher's shop, and Cassell's, written for households running on a budget, gives it several treatments, including the marinade used here. The vinegar-and-juniper marinade points to northern European practice rather than English; juniper berries, cloves and bay in a sour bath are often associated with German and Alsatian handling of fresh pork, and "piquant" in nineteenth-century English cookery books tends to be used for dishes finished with a sharp, vinegar-based sauce. Serving the whole head at table, sauce apart in a tureen, belonged to an era when a diner expected to see what an animal had been and to be handed a portion of ear or snout without comment. The same cut survives today mostly in the pressed forms \ttête, Italian coppa di testa — where the head is boiled down and set in its own gelatine rather than presented entire.