[Sca-cooks] Boar's Head

Elise Fleming alysk at ix.netcom.com
Wed Aug 20 15:30:35 PDT 2008


Drat the slowness of those digests!  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 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.

Alys K.

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/




More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list