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Boned Pig's Head in Jelly
The head should be corned in the same kind of pickle as corned beef, but only lie in it 2 or 3 days.
Bone the head before salting. It should be the head of a butcher's porker, not a fat bacon hog. Saw it in halves and cut the meat close to the bone. It is handier to slice made up in two halves than one whole head. You want besides: 4 pounds of sausage meat from the butcher's. 2 corned red tongues, or 4 if pigs' tongues. 2 pounds of fat salt pork.
Take the two halves of the head from the brine, wash in cold water, trim off any discolored portions, take off the ears-they can be thrown in the boiler separate-then laying the head skin downwards slice off some of the meat from the thick parts and lay over the thin. Spread some sausage meat over; cut the tongues and fat pork in strips and lay them on the sausage crosswise of the head. Cover the strips with the rest of the sausage meat. Roll up the two halves tightly, beginning with the snout, which is to be in the middle of the roll, and the rolls to be of even thickness from one end to the other and evenly mixed, the lean with the fat, so as to slice all alike and no waster. Roll up in clean white pudding cloths, sew or tie securely. Boil from 4 to 6 hours in a boiler that will hold six gallons of water, and put in with the head some soup vegetables and sage, and pepper and salt. When done press them in shape like any other galantine; there is no better shape than the long and narrow sinks of the steam chest. Some cheaper tins made like them should be kept on hand for such purposes.
The liquor in which the head has boiled 5 hours will be a strong jelly when cold, without the addition of gelatine.
The cloth wrapping for galantines and pig's heads that comes the nearest to absolute purity is a piece of well-worn white linen tablecloth such as the housekeeper generally can supply. The many bleachings it has had have freed it from the taste of new cloth. It should be washed in clear water and kept white and dry for such uses.
Take off the grease and clarify the jelly in the same way as directed for aspic, and then use it to coat the boned pig's heads in their moulds by the same method as boned turkeys.
They are adapted either to be set on the table whole or sliced with the jelly surrounding for individual dishes-their chief merit being, they are always declared to be good eating.
This is hotel-kitchen work written for a cook with a steam chest and a six-gallon boiler. The method is sound, but almost every quantity assumes a butcher who will bone a head for you and a larder stocked with cured tongue.
- The hinge: roll evenly or the slices failThe whole point of the construction is that every slice shows the same ratio of lean, fat, tongue and sausage. Redistribute meat from the thick cheek onto the thin parts before you spread the forcemeat, and keep the roll the same diameter end to end; a tapered roll gives you a handful of unsellable slices.
- "A butcher's porker, not a fat bacon hog"He wants a young lean pig, not an old heavy fat animal. Ask for a split, skin-on head, boned, with the ears kept separate as the recipe directs.
- The corning pickle is not given hereThe instruction points back to the corned beef brine elsewhere in the book, so this page has no measured salt, sugar or saltpetre at all. If you cure the head, use a current recipe with weighed salt and a measured curing salt, and hold the brine under refrigeration for the two or three days rather than in a cellar.
- Corned red tonguesThese are cured beef tongues, red from the saltpetre in the cure; the recipe's substitution of four pigs' tongues for two beef implies a pig tongue is roughly half the size. Cured tongue is a specialty-butcher or deli item now, and plain fresh tongue, simmered and peeled first, gives the flavour but not the colour.
- Sausage meatFour pounds of bulk pork sausage meat, unsmoked and uncased. Anything heavily seasoned with fennel or chilli will dominate; a plain breakfast-style or country sausage is closer to what he means.
- Cloth and tyingWell-washed linen still works, but unbleached muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth is easier to find and to sterilise. Roll tightly, sew the seam, then tie at intervals like a roast so the cloth cannot loosen during four to six hours of boiling.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil will burst the cloth and render the fat out. Keep the water at 180-190F for 4 to 6 hours, until a skewer meets no resistance; a temperature probe reading 175F at the centre of the roll is a reliable finish point.
- Pressing and the jellyPress the hot rolls in a narrow loaf pan or terrine mould with a weight on top and chill overnight. The cooking liquor sets firm on its own from the skin and bone collagen; degrease it cold, then clarify with egg white as for aspic before coating the sliced or whole galantine.
- Yield and keepingOne head made up this way yields two large rolls, enough for a substantial cold table. Refrigerated, cut galantine keeps three or four days; it is a dish meant for a buffet or a cold table, not for a week in the icebox.
Boned and rolled pig's head belongs to the old charcutier's economy, in which the least saleable part of the animal is turned into the most decorative dish on the cold table. In France the same raw material becomes fromage de tête or, dressed and glazed in aspic, a galantine; in England it was brawn. The difference here is technique rather than nationality: instead of picking the cooked meat into a mould, the head is boned raw, layered with forcemeat and cured tongue for a patterned cross-section, then boiled in a cloth and pressed. The details place the page in the late nineteenth-century American hotel kitchen -- sausage meat bought by the four pounds from the butcher, a boiler holding six gallons, moulds copied from the long narrow sinks of the steam chest, and a worn linen tablecloth pressed into service because new cloth would taint the meat. Jessup Whitehead wrote for the men running those kitchens, and his closing line about the dish always being declared good eating is the argument he expected to carry weight: it looked handsome, sliced without waste, and cost almost nothing.