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Shoat's Head, to Stew
Clean the head and feet; and put them on to parboil with the liver. Then split up the head, through the nose, taking out the bones. Cut the meat from the feet and chop up with the liver, season this with pepper and salt. Lay the head open and fill it with this mince and the yolks of some hard-boiled eggs: if this does not fill the head, add some grated bread crumbs or crackers and butter.
Sew up the head and bind it with thread; put it in the pot with the water it has been parboiled in and let it stew slowly. Take up the head, and add to the gravy a lump of butter, rolled in flour, some browning and some walnut catsup. Pour this over the head, which should be brown. If the shoat is not very small, use bread and butter instead of the liver.--Mrs. R.
A stuffed, stewed pig's head of the sort that used to be made whenever a young hog was killed. Nothing here is difficult, but almost everything depends on the butcher, and two of the seasonings no longer exist on supermarket shelves.
- What a shoat isA shoat is a young weaned pig, killed well short of full market weight. Its head is small enough that the liver mince may fill it; the note at the end tells you that on a larger head you should switch to a bread stuffing, since one liver will be lost in it.
- Order the head preparedAsk for a scalded, scraped head with the hair, eyes and ear canals removed and the brain taken out, split or whole as you prefer. If it comes whole and unsplit you will be splitting it through the snout yourself, which is the fiddliest step in the recipe. Four trotters go with it.
- Parboil timesThe head and feet need a genuine parboil of 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer before you can bone them; the liver needs only 20-30 minutes and should be lifted out early or it turns grainy. Keep the cooking liquid, it is the whole basis of the gravy.
- Sewing and bindingUse butcher's twine and a trussing needle, not sewing thread, which cuts into the skin as the meat swells. Bind the parcel like a rolled roast so the stuffing does not escape during the second, longer stew.
- The second stewSlow means slow: a bare tremble, 2 to 3 hours, until a skewer goes through the cheek without resistance. Cheek and jowl meat is heavily collagenous and will be tough and rubbery if the pot is allowed to boil hard.
- Browning"Some browning" is burnt-sugar colouring: sugar cooked dark and let down with water, which nineteenth-century cooks either made at home or bought ready-bottled. Modern gravy browning or a dark caramel does the same job; it colours more than it flavours.
- Walnut catsupA sharp, dark condiment of green walnuts salted and steeped with vinegar and spice, thin as soy sauce and quite unlike tomato ketchup. It is still made in Britain; mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce fills the same salty-sour-savoury slot.
- Butter rolled in flourBeurre manie: equal weights soft butter and flour kneaded together, then whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. Add it a little at a time until the gravy coats a spoon; a quart of stock will take several tablespoons of each.
- Yield and servingA stuffed shoat's head makes a substantial dish for a table of several. It is good hot, sliced across so each portion shows the stuffing and egg yolk, and it will also set firm overnight in its own jelly.
Household books from the Virginia and Carolina table tradition treat hog-killing as an event that had to be answered in full: the hams and sides were cured, the fat rendered, and the head, feet, ears and organs were used within days because they would not keep. This recipe belongs to that week. Stuffing and rolling a boned head is an old European technique, related to the various forms of brawn and to French fromage de tête, and the ornamental use of hard-boiled egg yolks in the mince is a device long associated with English cookery. Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) was assembled from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housewives, and a recipe of this kind, closing with "Mrs. R." rather than a headnote, belongs to that manner of compiling - it is a working household's method, written down for other households that already knew what a shoat was.