Boar's Head Galantines

For practice in putting up a boar's head the beginner should bone and cook pigs' heads to serve cold, until he has become familiar with the methods of making them good and of putting them in shape. One or two heads a week would be esteemed a luxury in any hotel among the regular cold dishes. For there was no foolishness about the ancient liking for a hogs head and it is considered as good eating: to-dav as it ever was, but requires a good deal of the cook. It must be partly salted, it must have the superabundant fat cut out and lean and brawn supplied instead; it must be carefully seasoned and cooked until perfectly tender and the liquor it is boiled in is jelly. Choose a large head for the purpose and a small one to stuff it with. Cut it as far back as the shoulder bones of the hog to get as much of the neck as possible. Begin at the throat and cut the meat from the bone without cutting through the skin; take out the tongue, put them both into the corned beef brine (No. 650) to remain two or three days. Then take them out, wash and trim, and cut away all the fat of the jowls. Sew up the mouth and throat. Place the small head similarly boned and prepared inside the large one, fill in with tongues cut in strips and some well seasoned pork sausage meat, cover in the neck with the rind of pickled pork, then sew the stuffed head in a cloth, boil it four or five hours, take it up and press it in a suitable mould and set it away to become cold. After that take off the cloth, remove the threads and slice the meat to serve.

To Make An Ornamental Dish

It is not essential that a boar's head shall always be set up with ears erect and mouth open, it may be a smooth rounded dish of meat only having the general outline of the head shape, and to form it that way it is necessary to take the cooked head out of the cloth it was boiled in when it is nearly cold, then take a long muslin bandage and wrap around it, drawing tight in one place and slack in another to give the head the proper form, then set it in the refrigerator to become solid in that shape. Afterwards, take off the bandage, wipe off with a cloth dipped in hot water, then glaze the head by frequent basting with jelly in a cold place until it is covered, or, glazed with meat essence, and- ornament with cubes and patterns in aspic.