Treat a hog’s head in the same manner as for head cheese, adding a little vinegar with the other seasonings.
Treat a hog’s head in the same manner as for head cheese, up to the point where the liquor is added to the chopped meat. The heart and liver may also be cooked with the head, and any scraps or bloody parts of the meat may be soaked and cooked with it. When the meat is freed from bone, gristle, and skin, and chopped finely, and all the liquor is added to it, it is seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, thyme or marjoram, and brought to a boil. Enough corn-meal, or corn-meal and buckwheat flour in the proportion of one-third cupful of buckwheat to two-thirds of a cupful of corn-meal, is added, to make the mixture of the consistency of corn-meal mush. About one cupful of the two combined will be required for each three pints of the pork mixture. Let this come to a boil, stirring it constantly; boil it five minutes, and put it into a cooker for four hours or more. Pour it into a mould or bread pan and, when cold, slice and fry it like sausage.
Wash the pigs’ feet, soak them in warm water for one-half hour, then scrub and scrape them well; soak them again for twelve hours in cold, salted water, and clean them again. If necessary, singe them; remove the toes, and bring them to a boil in salted water to more than cover them. Boil them five minutes, and cook them for ten hours or more in a cooker. If not tender, reheat them till boiling, and cook them again. Remove them from the water, split them with a cleaver, unless this is done before cooking, pack them in a jar, and cover them with hot, spiced vinegar, preferably made from white wine. They are eaten cold, or dipped in batter and fried.
In buying poultry select that which has clean, unbroken skin and is as fat as possible. Young chickens have often a darker appearance than old, owing to the fact that there is less fat under the skin or that the skin is thinner. They have few hairs, many pin-feathers, and the end of the breast-bone, toward the tail, is limber and cartilaginous. In old chickens (fowl) this bone is stiff, there are many hairs, few pin-feathers, and the scales on the legs are hard and horny. The wing joint is firm in old chickens, but is sometimes broken by poultry dealers in order to make the purchaser think the poultry younger than it is.