Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Baked Pig's Head
Cut a pig's head into halves and thoroughly clean it, take out the brains, trim the snout and ears and bake it in a moderate oven for an hour and a half. Wash the brains thoroughly, blanch them, beat them up with an egg, salt and pepper, some finely-chopped or pounded sage, and a small piece of butter. Fry or brown them on the fire, and serve with the head.
Oscar assumes a cook who has butchered before and a kitchen that receives whole heads as a matter of course. The method is sound; the gaps are in preparation and timing.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. At that heat the head wants foil or a covered roasting pan for most of its time, uncovered only at the end to colour the skin.
- An hour and a half is shortA split head is dense with collagen and connective tissue, and 90 minutes leaves the cheek and jowl tough. Figure two and a half to three and a half hours depending on size, cooking until the meat pulls freely from the jawbone — an internal temperature around 195F in the cheek, well past the 145F safe minimum for pork.
- Ordering itAsk the butcher to split the head lengthwise with a bandsaw and to remove the eyes; this is not work for a home knife. Confirm whether the head has been scalded and scraped, as bristle stubble must be singed off with a torch before cooking.
- "Thoroughly clean"This means more than rinsing: scrub the ear canals and nostrils, brush the teeth, and soak the halves in cold salted water for several hours, changing it once, to draw out blood.
- Blanching the brainsSoak them in cold water first until the water runs clear, peel away the thin membrane and its threads of blood vessel, then drop into barely simmering salted water with a splash of vinegar for a few minutes until firm enough to handle. They are custard-soft raw and impossible to beat with egg otherwise.
- Brains at the shopPork brains are legal and sold in many countries, though in most places they are a special order rather than a shelf item; unlike beef brain they are not restricted as specified risk material. If none can be had, the head is perfectly good on its own with a mustard or a sharp sauce.
- Frying the brain mixtureOnce beaten with egg it behaves like a loose omelette. Cook it gently in butter in a small pan and turn it out in one piece, or drop it in spoonfuls; high heat makes it weep and turn grainy.
- Yield and serviceA whole head feeds six to eight generously. Carve the cheeks and jowl, pull the tongue and the meat from around the ear, and treat the skin as crackling. Leftovers pressed with their own gelatin overnight become brawn.
The pig's head has been the boundary between thrift and ceremony for centuries: cheap, laborious, and — set whole on a platter with an apple — the emblem of a feast in English boar's head carols and Christmas revels. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 from the Waldorf's kitchens, sits at an odd angle to that tradition. The Waldorf served millionaires, and the classical repertoire Oscar drew on treated the head as raw material for brawn, fromage de tête and grilled ears. What is notable here is that the brains are not discarded but returned to the same plate, bound with egg and sage in a manner much older than the hotel. Sage and pork is a long-established pairing in English cookery, though the usual explanation — that the herb cuts richness — is received tradition rather than documented fact. The dish reads as a country preparation written down by a city chef who saw no reason to apologise for it.