Pig’s Head with Liver and Heart ( Stewed ).
Clean and split the head, taking out the brains and setting aside. Put the head in a pot with water enough to cover it and parboil it. Have ready another pot with the liver and heart, cut into inch-long pieces, stewed in just enough water to keep them from scorching. When the head is half-done, add the entire contents of the second vessel to the first, and season with salt, pepper, a little onion, parsley, and sage. Cover and stew until the head is very tender, when take it out and lay it in the middle of a flat dish. With a perforated skimmer remove the liver and heart and spread about the head, surrounding, but not covering it. Strain the gravy and return to the pot, thicken with brown flour, squeeze in the juice of a lemon, and drop in carefully force-meat balls of the brains, prepared according to the foregoing receipt and fried a light brown. Boil once and pour about the head, arranging the balls upon it, to cover the split between the two sides of the head.
You may improve this dish, which is very savory, by boiling a couple of pigs’ feet with the head until the meat will slip from the bones. Take them from the liquor, cut off and chop the meat, and put into the large pot when you add the liver, etc.