pig-heads-msg – 3/7/20 Cooking, displaying or otherwise working with pig’s heads. Real and artificial. NOTE: See also these files: pork-msg, meat-smoked-msg, Cooking-Piggy-art, chopped-meat-msg, illusion-fds-msg, whole-pig-msg, sotelties-msg, p-pigs-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 18:30:41 -0700 From: Susan Fox-Davis Subject: Re: SC - What to do with the head This reminds me of a cook's jape I committed upon a royal personage some years past. The concept was not original with me, I heard of a similar incident long ago and far away, and decided to commit it anew. Knowing the timid tastes of our populace, instead of an actual Boar's Head we served pies of mincemeat to the populace and a paste replica of a Boar's Head to the High Table with mincemeat inside. The head was capped with a gilded Crown, so I bore the Boar to the King Guy, exhorting him to de-crown the pretender and begin the sweet course. The king graciously did so. Being a good little herald-cook, I announced it to the crowd. "The King has the brains of a Pig!" King Guy looks at me. I look at him. "I have an amendment to the previous announcement. The King does NOT have the brains of a Pig!" King Guy looks at me. I look at him. "I'm leaving while I still have MY head," quoth I, and did so with all speed. Selene cook, herald and unemployed jester Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 22:00:21 -0400 To: Cooks within the SCA From: "Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] How to question.... Also sprach KazOShea at aol.com: >>> How do you go about cooking a pig's head ? I do mean a whole one. Any tips or such would be most appreciated. Iago <<< It depends to some extent what you're doing with it. You'll need to allow a minimum of about three hours of very low simmering in seasoned court-bouillon (basically wine, water, lots of seasonings, almost like crab boil). If you want to be extra insane and bone it out or something, or if the look is important, you ought to bandage it well with cheesecloth strips to help hold it together and keep the skin from splitting (it still may). If you cook it whole, the brain won't be worth much, you can't (or at least probably won't want to consider) eating the eyes, but the tongue should be good. If you want to bone it or decorate it and serve whole, carefully remove the bandages after chilling it until it is fully cold and firm throughout, then plunge for a few seconds in very hot water to soften the gelatin-ey stuff holding the cheesecloth in place. If you just remove it while it's hot from the pot, it's likely to tear. You can also roast it, but the ears love to burn and the skin usually shrinks and splits. Better to simmer it til done, then chill and glaze it in the oven during reheating. Adamantius Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 19:13:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Diana Skaggs Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] How to question.... To: Cooks within the SCA Iago, What are you going to do with the head? All the recipes I have call for cleaning it thoroughly, removing all the organs and skin, soaking in salt water, then simmer in fresh water to cover until it falls off the bones. Liadan Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 19:16:45 -0500 From: Robert Downie Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] How to question.... To: Cooks within the SCA Diana Skaggs wrote: >>> What are you going to do with the head? All the recipes I have call for cleaning it thoroughly, removing all the organs and skin, soaking in salt water, then simmer in fresh water to cover until it falls off the bones. Liadan <<< Oh, I saw this same method done. Afterwards you mince it and reassemble it on the skull of the boar (using the meat from more than one head if necessary) and endore it, if I recall correctly. I think it's from the Sabina welserin cookbook, one of her "lordly dishes". Unfortunately, I can't check it from this computer, and my husband is busy on the other one Amusing anecdote follows: Back in the old days when we had very inexperienced cooks, someone decided it would be really cool to present a boar's head at a feast. They were able to procure one, with the condition from the butcher that it be used for display only, since it wasn't food grade. It ended up being dropped off at the house of the only cook that owned a house with a large kitchen (carpeted!), unfortunately, she was really inexperienced in the kitchen department, not to mention really squeamish. A couple of hours later, one of the other cooks got a panicked call from her asking her to come right over. She couldn't bring herself to touch the pig's head that was sitting on her table and dripping all over her carpeted floor! The one she called wasn't much help either. Eventually, it made it to the feast hall. They decided to bake it to give it a little color. It wasn't browning to their satisfaction, so they brushed it with a thin layer of iodine (hey, no one was going to eat it anyway) and put it back in the oven to see if the color would become a little less bright. Shortly afterwards, the then Baron (a notoriously picky eater) poked his head in the kitchen and said "wow, that smells good - I might actually eat something at this feast" at the exact moment they opened the oven to check on the pig, at the exact moment the eyeballs exploded. Timing is everything! Faerisa Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:46:40 +0000 From: "Olwen the Odd" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] How to question.... To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org >>> How do you go about cooking a pig's head ? I do mean a whole one. Any tips Or such would be most appreciated. Iago <<< It would depend on what you are planning on doing with it. If you are using it as a centerpiece then tent it and bake it on a rack over water, if you are going to use it to make hogshead loaf then you would boil it in a vinegared water with appropriate spicing. Olwen Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 11:22:49 -0400 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Food and squeamishness To: Cooks within the SCA Also sprach Susan Fox-Davis: >>> I was wondering, has anyone ever served food at a feast such as a whole >>> pig's or ox's head, or a whole piglet, or, basically, anything that can >>> stare right back at you while you munch on it? >> > I'm going to ask the white-girl-city-kid question: how exactly do > you eat a pig's or ox's head, when it is presented whole like that? Serious head-eating cultures frequently seem to prefer to split the head, to better get at the brain and tongue, and have a little better control over the cooking rates of the various parts (think of the times when it's a good idea to separate the dark meat and white meat of birds, and cook them for different periods of time. You can still eat the head whole, but people that like brains often find them pretty overcooked and tasteless by the time the rest of the head is done. > Which parts are edible, or at least tastier than others? I suppose you're not too hugely squeamish, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Think of all those rarely-used, rarely-noticed muscles in your head. Your cheeks, lips, the ones you may use to wiggle your ears or nose, or eyebrows, or those weird people that can wriggle their scalps back and forth. Most of those muscles are present in sheep's, calves', and pig's heads, and are essentially viable meat. Attached to them are various bits of gristly stuff, some made of elastin, which doesn't break down in cooking, and collagen, which does (IOW, it becomes tender enough to chew, for those that like stuff like pig's feet, oxtails, etc., it's pretty similar). Choice bits on a pig's head, for those that like or will eat them, anyway, seem to be the jowls (the cheek muscles, so much so that they are often cured separately like small hams: see Bath Chaps and that Italian stuff like pancetta but whose name I forget, which is the traditional bacon source for pasta carbonara and arrabiatta...), the tongue, and the eyes (actually the muscles behind the eyes, although some do eat the eyes themselves, which I consider a bit much myself). > Which are nasty or too cartiliginous to bother with? I take it > that the eyes are no good, since they usually seem to get taken out > and replaced with fruit. The eyes are frequently removed when the head is roasted, because they shrink and fall out, and can look a little scary even to those with pretty cast-iron stomachs, hence the cranberries. Some people do eat them, but they have a lot of very tough membranous stuff (talk to your doctor about how delicate your cornea is when scratched, but how friggin' tough it is to puncture). The apple in the mouth is similar; the jaw muscles contract and force the mouth open; you don't want to serve a screaming animal, usually. The ears and snout have non-soluble cartilage; some people eat them anyway; one of the terrors of my in-laws' house in the summer was cold pig's snout/ear salad. I'm all for crunch, but for some reason cartilage isn't on my approved list of sources, especially when you boil the ear or snout for three or four hours and the skin is nearly disintegrated, but the cartilage is still intact. Some French recipes for calf's head vinaigrette, or head cheese, etc., call for the ears and snout to be removed, at least from the final product. And then, there's the skin, the thin sheets of muscle encasing the head, and the more tender (when cooked) connective tissue holding it all together. Again, sort of like cooked pig's feet, but shaped differently. > Brains? Best when cooked separately, but sometimes just eaten out of the cooked head. > Ears? My dog likes dried pig ears, they are sold by the dozen in > pet supply stores as chewies. Maybe she is on to something that we > should know about? She's not squeamish. For me, I guess it's kind of similar to when you bite into something like a chicken leg or thigh, and sometimes get a knuckle of cartilage in your mouth. Some of that stuff does cook to a tender state, but a lot of it we're just conditioned to regard as cartilage, which is a bit like bone, and spit it out. Ironically, one of my favorite parts of a roast chicken is the very end of the wing tip, because you can eat the little bite, bones and all, like a potato chip. Adamantius Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 11:29:41 -0400 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: [Sca-cooks] I mentioned an Italian cured hog jowl... To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org ...it is called guanciale, and is highly flavored and, because of its gelatin content, remains moist and tender through virtually any cooking process. Over time, pancetta (cured belly, like American streaky bacon) has become a common substitute, and for that, prosciutto or bacon are often substituted (especially in the US, with some of the interesting import laws we've had). Adamantius Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 12:47:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Naquiba Katira al-Maghrebiyya Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] bread boar's head To: Cooks within the SCA It is tradition to serve a boar's head to the high table at the end of the feast after the Boar Hunt in the Province of the Mists. It is usually fruit cake frosted/decorated with marzipan. The last one can be seen at: http://history.westkingdom.org/Year38/Photos/BH04.htm Katira West Kingdom Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:54:00 -0400 From: Daniel Myers Subject: [Sca-cooks] Roux in Sabina Welserin's cookbook? To: SCA Cooks I was digging through Sabina Welserin's cookbook (Valoise Armstrong's translation) looking for other stuff when I came across this recipe. "5 How to cook a wild boar's head, also how to prepare a sauce for it. A wild boar's head should be boiled well in water and, when it is done, laid on a grate and basted with wine, then it will be thought to have been cooked in wine. Afterwards make a black or yellow sauce with it. First, when you would make a black sauce, you should heat up a little fat and brown a small spoonful of wheat flour in the fat and after that put good wine into it and good cherry syrup, so that it becomes black, and sugar, ginger, pepper, cloves and cinnamon, grapes, raisins and finely chopped almonds. And taste it, however it seems good to you, make it so. " So what do you think? Did Welserin have Varenne beat by about 100 years? - Doc Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:44:51 +0200 From: Volker Bach Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Roux in Sabina Welserin's cookbook? To: Cooks within the SCA Am Dienstag, 18. Juli 2006 06:57 schrieb Sue Clemenger: > Dunno, since I'm not really familiar with Varenne (hope that > doesn't get me kicked out of the cool kids' kitchen). > It does, however, sound completely yummy. I wonder what kind of > cherries would have been used? It's almost cherry season here in > Montana....mmmm..... --Maire The original says 'kersseltz' - more like 'cherry sauce'. If this is indeed the same as the near-ubiquitous cherry sauce of South German tradition, the base is small sour cherries (Weichselkirschen). YIS Giano Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:47:30 +0200 From: Volker Bach Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Roux in Sabina Welserin's cookbook? To: Cooks within the SCA Am Dienstag, 18. Juli 2006 04:54 schrieb Daniel Myers: > I was digging through Sabina Welserin's cookbook (Valoise Armstrong's > translation) looking for other stuff when I came across this recipe. > > "5 How to cook a wild boar's head, also how to prepare a sauce for > it. A wild boar's head should be boiled well in water and, when it > is done, laid on a grate and basted with wine, then it will be > thought to have been cooked in wine. Afterwards make a black or > yellow sauce with it. First, when you would make a black sauce, you > should heat up a little fat and brown a small spoonful of wheat flour > in the fat and after that put good wine into it and good cherry > syrup, so that it becomes black, and sugar, ginger, pepper, cloves > and cinnamon, grapes, raisins and finely chopped almonds. And taste > it, however it seems good to you, make it so. " > > So what do you think? Did Welserin have Varenne beat by about 100 > years? I'd say it's pretty clear. But in Germany, that kind of sauce is around earlier than La Varenne anyway (Welserin is early, though, could well be the earliest). It's usually ascribed to French or Italian influence. The original text says ...darnach soll man ain schwartz oder ain gelbs brielin dariber machen, erstlich wan man das schwartz brielin will machen, soll man ain wenig schmaltz lassenn hais? werden vnnd ain leffellin voll schens mell jm schmaltz brennen vnnd darnach ain g?ten wein daranthon vnnd ain g?ten kersseltz... Giano Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:40:29 -0500 From: Jennifer Carlson Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Kitchen tips To: When preparing a boar's head for the head table: If you want to endore it, use a WHITE pig's head. Black pig + egg yolk = green! To remove the bristles, do NOT scald and pluck/scrape - it works on the animal's back, but not the head. Use a propane torch to singe them off. Do this outside. Please. Talana Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:21:32 -0400 From: "Elise Fleming" Subject: [Sca-cooks] Boar's Head: Was Kitchen Tips To: "sca-cooks at ansteorra.org" Talana wrote: <<< When preparing a boar's head for the head table: If you want to endore it, use a WHITE pig's head. Black pig + egg yolk = green! To remove the bristles, do NOT scald and pluck/scrape - it works on the animal's back, but not the head. Use a propane torch to singe them off. Do this outside. Please. >>> Oddly enough, I just read about a preparation for a boar's head in Peter Brears' new book "Cooking and Dining in Medieval England" (pp 167-171). It is a thorough description of the process beginning 2-3 weeks before a feast. He suggests using a disposable razor for the bristles, BTW. He's got a full page of 11 drawings to show the entire process of scalding and shaving the head, cutting through from throat to chin, exposing the skull, removing the face and curing it with salt, sewing up all the orifices, packing the head with forcemeat, etc. He includes garnishing suggestions. I think this would be a "must read" for anyone planning to do something for anyone... Oh, yes... Devra at Poison Pen Press has the book. Amazon _still_ doesn't have it and it's been nearly 10 months. Alys Katharine Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:30:35 -0400 From: "Elise Fleming" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Boar's Head To: "sca-cooks at ansteorra.org" Gunthar wrote: <<< I'm sure I would go ahead and eat parts of the head, especially the cheeks and such. Although I still won't eat brains. I'd even be tempted to gnaw on the eyeball if only to watch poor Elizabeth go screaming from the room. >>> While some boars' heads might contain brains and eyeballs, etc., Brears' version doesn't. His actually is a pig's head since a real boar's head is usually not available. He also comments, prior to his recipe, that baking a pig's head without any preparation is "unhygenic, inedible and wasteful mess". He notes that there are no early reciepes for preparing a boar's head but there are later versions through to the 20th century. In his recipe, the forcemeat which fills the head consists of pork shoulder, streaky bacon, rabbit meat, onions and spices. Boar tusks are used for a garnish, but if not available he says to use celery curled to represent them. A glace cherry works for the eyes - unless you have artificial glass ones. To simulate a black boar, he instructs the cook to mix black food coloring paste with lard and rub it over the head to make it look like one. Alys K. Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:43:28 -0400 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Boar's Head To: Cooks within the SCA On Aug 20, 2008, at 6:30 PM, Elise Fleming wrote: <<< While some boars' heads might contain brains and eyeballs, etc., Brears' version doesn't. His actually is a pig's head since a real boar's head is usually not available. He also comments, prior to his recipe, that baking a pig's head without any preparation is "unhygenic, inedible and wasteful mess". He notes that there are no early recopes for preparing a boar's head but there are later versions through to the 20th century. In his recipe, the forcemeat which fills the head consists of pork shoulder, streaky bacon, rabbit meat, onions and spices. Boar tusks are used for a garnish, but if not available he says to use celery curled to represent them. A glace cherry works for the eyes - unless you have artificial glass ones. To simulate a black boar, he instructs the cook to mix black food coloring paste with lard and rub it over the head to make it look like one. >>> I have some issues with Brears' adaptation, but it does produce a beautiful dish if done right. My feeling is, that's a great stuffing if you're making a nineteenth or twentieth century French game terrine, but we have lots of medieval French, English, and other recipes for stuffed foods, not to mention one 16th-century English one for a stuffing "To Farce All Things". Most of them call for boiled pork, minced and ground, raw eggs, cooked egg yolks, soft cheese, and spices. I'm curious as to why Brears, with his Hampton Court experience, took a different route. Adamantius Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:59:00 -0400 From: "The Sheltons" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Boar's Head To: Chiquart provides detailed instructions on how to glaze boar's heads and make them breathe fire. He recommends painting the faces half green and half yellow. Then to make them even more spiffy, he recommends serving them with banners around their heads with the heraldry of the lord they will be placed in front of. John le Burguillun Atlantia Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:18:01 -0500 (EST) From: "Avelyn Grene" Subject: [Sca-cooks] An Entrement Experiment To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org I am the head cook for a local event in Ohio (Grand Tournament of the Unicorn/Baronial Investiture), and am working on a rather large entrement for the event, which I have been pining after for a while now. I am making the fire breathing pig from Du Fait de Cuisine. Since I figured some may be interested, I have documented the process (I think we took over a 100 photos in all) and I have posted the results of the pyrotechnics on my blog (working only on the head, I still need to work on a body, since I am not serving a whole pig), and there is a link to the translation of the original text included as well. Blog: www.greneboke.blogspot.com PS, if you aren't into raw hog heads, you may want to scroll towards the bottom. Avelyn Grene -- THLady Avelyn Grene Apprentice to Master Edouard Halidai The Commonplace Boke of Lady Avelyn Grene www.greneboke.com Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 07:22:34 -0500 From: Johnna Holloway To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Boarshead was Decadence menu If I recall, the cook went to pick up all the other meats at the butcher and was explaining what it was she was doing and he mentioned he just butchered a hog -- did she want the head? It had been tossed. So she took it and it became a real, non-edible subtletie. This is what I remember anyway. It wasn't purchased to be eaten. Johnnae On Dec 19, 2009, at 9:03 PM, Adele M wrote: Johnna Holloway wrote: < I am sure this was a safety concern. I am not exactly sure how the head had been preserved prior to being served. Given the rise of the concerns over prions and brains, it might be for the best. > << *boggle* I wasn't aware there was a concern over hogs' brains. In any case, you can't get to the brains without considerably more work than you can carry out at the table. Antonia di Benedetto Calvo >> from the fb "SCA Cooks" group: Michelle Enzinas May 24 at 8:36 AM My husband got me a huge boar's head. I'm dizzy with possibilities. Ideas? Catherine Van Verth Sayre Only an SCA wife would be excited about this. Jörgen Fägerquist I think I remember Swedish Christmas recipes for pig heads. Michelle Enzinas There are a num er of Christmas traditions with the head. It's why I wanted one. Jason Cherches Head cheese! Glenn Gorsuch Porchetta di Testa. Then make broth with the skull and bits. Basically, after cleaning, shaving, and torching the head to remove hair, remove the skull, keeping the head and cheeks and everything as intact as possible, season it well (in my case, lemon zest, garlic, marjoram, salt, pepper, esplimette di piment), roll it up, tie it, and treat as a porchetta roast (sous vide to cook, then crisped the outside in a hot oven). Then ask your friends if they want slices off the nose end or ear end. Alternately, if it still has the cheeks, and you don’t feel like being a demented plastic surgeon, make guanciale! Tracey Sawyer I believe if cooked low and slow the pork cheeks are the best cut of the pig... carved at the table and served with a piquant sauce to their majesties would make a frabjus subtlety...; or of course there is brawn - I believe Americans call it headcheese. google for recipes. Leoba Mordenvale It can be baked similar to a pork loin. This one was rubbed with a spiced honey glaze and was eaten down to the bone . Michelle Enzinas 1/1/20 at 9:27 AM So I made a boar's head for Christmas dinner. We still have left overs. We have fried it for breakfast every morning since and made a poacher's pie with moose, bear and duck. I'm at a loss for what to do with the rest. I had no idea we'd end up with so much fat and meat. Suggestions? Tanayle Haga I need to know about the yellow tongue. Please tell us! Michelle Enzinas ok you (or Jon McLean, apprentice extraordinaire) have to fish it out of the head via the esophagus, cutting ligaments. Then I boiled it, cooled and dried it, and then Jon painted it with edible gold glitter (instead of shell gold). Toi Fiore Where does one even get a boars head?? Michelle Enzinas This one came from Amateurs de Sangliers, in Maricourt Quebec. The dudes hunted it with spears IN GARB Mary Hall Sheahan Toi Fiore the Asian market near us sells whole roast duck & pig, and the head is available. For those of us with no access to boar hunters. . Michelle Enzinas A duck and boar poachers pie to freeze Michelle Enzinas More jars of fat for cooking Michelle Enzinas Rendered skin for compost or dog. Edited by Mark S. Harris pig-heads-msg 2 of 16