Souse Cheese
Lay the meat in cold water as cut from the hog. Let it stand three or four days, shifting the water each day. Scrape it and let it stand a day or two longer, changing the water often, and if it should turn warm, pour a little salt in the water. The oftener it is scraped, the whiter will be the souse. Boil in plenty of water to cover it, replenishing when needed. When tender enough, put it in milk-warm water, and when cold in salt water. Boil the head until the bones will almost fall out. Clean one dozen or more ears and boil also; while hot, chop very fine, and season with pepper and salt. Put in a mold or bowl with a weight on top. The feet may be soused whole, or cut up with the head and ears; but it is not so nice. Clean them by dipping in boiling water and scraping; do not hold them to the fire to singe off the hair. One head and one dozen ears will make a good-sized cheese.--Mrs. W.
This is a hog's-head souse from the era of the winter hog killing, when a cold outbuilding was the only refrigeration a household had. The method depends on that vanished context, and the long soak is the part that cannot be carried over.
- The three-to-six-day soak is the failure pointRaw pork heads, ears and feet are held in changed water for three or four days, then a day or two more, at whatever the ambient temperature happens to be. The instruction "if it should turn warm, pour a little salt in the water" acknowledges that the water and meat may warm during that time; a handful of unmeasured salt in soaking water is not a cure and does not reliably stop bacterial growth.
- Later boiling does not undo itBoiling the head until the bones loosen will kill the organisms present, but several toxins produced during warm holding — Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxin among them — survive prolonged cooking. Once the meat has been held warm, no amount of simmering makes it safe.
- Cooling in "milk-warm water"Cooked pork is deliberately transferred to lukewarm water, then to salt water once cold. Lukewarm is the range in which surviving bacteria multiply fastest, applied here to a high-collagen, low-acid meat in an unmeasured brine — precisely the conditions modern practice exists to avoid.
- Pressing at room temperatureThe chopped meat is packed into a bowl under a weight with no direction to chill it. A dense mass of warm cooked pork cools slowly from the centre, which is why commercial head cheese is now made under controlled chilling and cure.
- Head and trotters specificallySnouts, ear canals and feet carry heavy surface contamination and are difficult to clean thoroughly. The recipe's own remarks about scraping repeatedly, and about not singeing the hair over the fire, show how much handling the raw material needed.
- If you want souseUse a current, tested recipe with specified chill temperatures and cure quantities. Do not adapt the timings above.
- What the words mean"Souse" is the pickled, pressed meat itself, and "cheese" here refers only to the shape — a loaf turned out of a mold, with no dairy involved. "Ears" means pigs' ears; a dozen of them alongside one head gives some idea of the scale of a hog-killing day.
Souse belongs to the frugal, whole-animal butchery that governed Southern farm kitchens before refrigeration: the head, ears and feet were the parts that would not keep and had to be dealt with within days of slaughter, so they were boiled down, chopped, seasoned and pressed into a firm loaf that sliced cold.