Head Cheese
Make it the same in a general way as pressed corned beef, with a sage and pepper seasoning.
Split the heads, bone them, singe, scrape and thoroughly cleanse them and let lie in corned beef pickle about 2 days. Boil 3 or 4 hours. Then cut up the meat, strain the liquor through a fine gravy strainer, put cut meat and liquor back in the boiler and simmer 2 hours more with the seasonings added, cool and press in moulds or bright milk pans. 2 teaspoonfuls of pepper, 2 of ground sage and 2 of salt is the average seasoning needed for one head that is partly salted before cooking.
It is useless trying to make fat bacon heads "go" in these forms. Either take off all the fat for lard or else mix in a proportion of lean corned beef. "Oh why did I at Brazennose Root up the roots of knowledge? A butcher that can't read will kill A pig that's been to college." --Lament of Toby, the
A whole-hog-head brawn scaled for a hotel larder. Most of the work is butchery and cleaning; the set depends entirely on how much gelatin you pull out of the bones and skin.
- The hinge: the liquor, not the meatThe second two-hour simmer with the meat back in the strained stock is what gives the loaf its set. Reduce until the liquor is visibly sticky and a spoonful gels on a cold plate, or the pressed cheese will crumble when sliced.
- "Corned beef pickle" is not specifiedThe recipe simply refers back to pressed corned beef and gives no brine formula here, so treat this two-day soak as seasoning of unknown strength rather than a cure. If you want brined meat, use a current measured brine recipe; the salt in the finished dish will vary, so taste the liquor before adding the two teaspoons of salt.
- Sourcing the headsA butcher will split and often part-bone a hog head on request. Ask for it split lengthwise with the brain, eyes, ear canals and snout gristle removed; scrub the teeth and gums, and pull any remaining bristles after singeing.
- Boiling time is realThree to four hours at a bare simmer is not an exaggeration. The meat should slip from the bone and the skin should be soft enough to chop; ears and skin are what carry the gelatin, so keep them in.
- "Bright milk pans" and mouldsMilk pans were shallow tinned basins, used here simply as loaf forms. A standard loaf tin lined with plastic wrap works, weighted with a board and a couple of tins on top; press while still warm so the pieces knit.
- The fat warningThe remark about "fat bacon heads" is practical: a very fat head yields a loaf that slices greasy and falls apart. Skim the stock hard, lift off the set fat when cold, and add lean meat if the mix looks pale and soft.
- Yield and servingOne hog head gives roughly 4-6 lb of pressed cheese, enough for a great many cold plates. Chill overnight, slice thin, and serve with vinegar, mustard or pickles.
- KeepingThis was made for a cold cellar. Refrigerate at once, keep no more than about four days, or slice and freeze; the high moisture and handled meat make it a poor candidate for long storage.
Head cheese contains no cheese and never did: the name is a translation of the same idea as German Presskopf and Dutch hoofdkaas, a pressed loaf shaped and sliced like a cheese. Its English ancestor is brawn, a Christmas dish of boiled and pressed boar or hog head recorded from the medieval period onward, and the Southern and Pennsylvania American versions, souse and Sulze, add vinegar to the same technique. Sage and pepper are the standard English seasoning, as they are in fresh pork sausage. The closing verse, on a butcher who cannot read killing a pig that has been to college, is Thomas Hood's comic "Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig" - a nod to the trained performing pigs that were a fairground standby of the early nineteenth century.