Making of Brawn

Ingredients

• Put but 2 Collars into each pot
• twelve corns of whole Pepper
• four Cloves
• a great Onion peeled and quartered
• two bay-leaves
• six shillings Beer
• well boiled with Salt

Method

1. 1

   Heat the oven for at least eight hours.

2. 2

   Put the ingredients into pots, fill with water, and bake without opening the oven.

3. 3

   After baking, let them cool for several days before removing the cloth.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight opened (1910) by Sir Kenelm Digby, page 123. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

MAKING OF BRAWN It must be a very large oven, that so it may contract the stronger heat, and keep it the longer. It must be at least eight hours heating with wood, that it be as hot as is possible. If the Brawn be young, it will suffice eight hours or a little more in the oven. But if old, it must be ten or eleven. Put but two Collars 2o6 SIR KENELMS DIGBIS into each pot, for bigger are unwieldy. Into every pot, put twelve cornsof whole Pepper, four Cloves, a great Onion peeled and quartered, and two bay- leaves, before you put them into the oven. Before they are set in, you do not fill them with water to the top, least any should spill in sliding them in; but fill them up by a bowl fastned to a long Pole. No water must be put in, after the oven is closed (nor the oven ever beopened,till afterall is through- ly baked) and therefore you must put in enough at first to serve to the last ; you must rowl your Col- lars as close as may be, that no air may be left in the folds of them : and sow them up in exceeding strong cloth, which a strong man must pull as hard as He can in the sowing. Their cloths must not be pulled off, till the Collars have been three or four days out of the oven, least you pull off part of the Brawn with them. Youmayputthe same proportion of Pepper, Cloves, &c. into the Souce drink as you did in the baking them ; which at either time (especially at first) give them a fine taste. The Souce-drink is made of six shillings Beer, and Thames or River- water, of each an equal quantity, well boiled with Salt

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.