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Pig's-Head Cheese
Having thoroughly cleaned a hog's or pig's head, split it in two, take out the eyes and the brain; clean the ears, throw scalding water over the head and ears, then scrape them well; when very clean, put in a kettle with water to cover it, and set it over a rather quick fire; skim it as any scum rises; when boiled so that the flesh leaves the bones, take it from the water with a skimmer into a large wooden bowl or tray; then take out every particle of bone, chop the meat fine, season to taste with salt and pepper (a little pounded sage may be added), spread a cloth over the colander, put the meat in, fold cloth closely over it, lay a weight on it so that it may press the whole surface equally (if it be lean use a heavy weight, if fat, a lighter one); when cold take off weight, remove from colander, and place in crock. Some add vinegar in proportion of one pint to a gallon crock. Clarify the fat from the cloth, colander, and liquor of the pot, and use for frying.
A whole-head brawn of the hog-killing season, and still a sound method. The two things the original assumes you know are that the pot must never boil hard and that the finished loaf is a fresh, perishable meat and not a preserve.
- Getting the headAsk a butcher for a split pig's head, skin on, ears attached, eyes and brain already removed; most will do this on request. A half head runs 4-5 lb, a whole one 8-12 lb, and the whole head yields roughly 4 to 5 lb of pressed meat.
- "Rather quick fire" is not a rolling boilBring it up briskly, then, for a clean loaf, hold it at the barest tremble, in the region of 180-190F, for 3 to 4 hours until the flesh slips from the bone. A hard boil emulsifies the fat into the liquor, and the loaf tends to set greasy and crumbly rather than clean and gelatinous.
- Skim, and keep skimmingThe grey scum that rises early on is coagulated protein and blood residue. Take it off patiently; whatever stays in the pot can end up as speckling in the set loaf.
- Save the cooking liquorThe recipe treats the liquor as a source of frying fat, but the collagen dissolved in it is what makes head cheese hold together. Reduce a couple of cups of the strained, defatted broth and work it into the chopped meat before pressing if the mixture looks dry. No commercial gelatine is needed.
- Chop while hotBone and chop the meat as soon as it can be handled. The gelatine sets fast as it cools, and cold meat will not bind into a single loaf under the weight.
- A modern pressA loaf pan lined with cling film, filled, covered and topped with a second pan holding a few cans, does the job of the cloth-lined colander. Set it on a tray; a good deal of jellied liquor will run out. Chill under weight overnight.
- Seasoning and the vinegarSeason the chopped meat aggressively while warm and taste it, since cold blunts salt. The vinegar proportion given, one pint to a gallon crock, works out to roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons per pound of meat, reckoning a full gallon crock at something like 8 lb, if you would rather scale it that way.
- Storage is the one real changeA crock in a cold cellar is not a refrigerator. Keep the loaf wrapped and chilled at 40F or below and eat it within four or five days, or slice and freeze it. It is a fresh cooked meat with no cure in it and will spoil like one.
- The clarified fatStrained and rendered clear, the fat from the pot is ordinary lard and keeps well refrigerated. Use it for frying potatoes or cornbread as intended.
Head cheese contains no cheese; the name is usually traced to the older sense of a pressed, moulded mass, and the dish is the same thing the English call brawn and much of the American South calls souse when it is sharpened with vinegar. Every part of the hog had a use at killing time, and the head, jowl, ears and snout, too bony and gelatinous to cut into joints, were boiled down and set in their own jelly. The Dixie Cook Book was compiled in the 1880s for kitchens that expected to process a whole animal in November and live off it through winter, and the final line, telling the cook to clarify the fat from the cloth, the colander and the pot liquor, is the clearest statement of that economy on the page.