I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

This past weekend, my crack team of medieval cookery kitcheners and I spent the weekend making (mostly) medieval food for a group of Early Music afficionados who were attending a retreat of sorts. There is something sublime in preparing, as the literature for the event described it, "historically informed food" while in the distance you hear various sorts of early polyphonic music being practiced or played. And the experience of hearing a room full of twenty-five or so talented musicians break into song as you bring the roasted pig's head around is one that I treasure. The head was served with a fifteenth century sauce appropriate for pork.

As an extra treat, one of the team has prepared her redactions and adaptations of a pair of recipes that we used for breakfast. They work well together since one uses egg yolks, and the other egg whites. I hope to have those for you with in a week or two.

• 1/2 a pig's head, about 10 lbs
• a cup or more of salt
• a dozen black peppercorns
• ground black pepper

Pull the head out of the brine and discard the brine. Rinse it and pat it dry. Put it on a baking sheet, a foil covered sheet is handy for this, and give it a healthy dose of black pepper all over. You shouldn't need to add salt, since the brine should have taken care of that. Cover the ear with foil to keep it from getting burnt. If you've got a tongue, I suggest pulling it out and treating it separately. (This half-a-head didn't, which is sort of a pity. I was going to boil it and serve it with mustard. Sic transit gloria porcus.) Put into a 350-375F oven and let cook for two hours. Remove the foil from the ear and let cook another half an hour. Check for doneness in your usual fashion, either by thermometer or by jabbing it with a skewer. I'd recommend a thermometer in this case, since the thickness of the head and the bones and cavities running through it make judging by eye a bit tricky.

Garnish as you please, show it off to your guests - it's quite impressive - then remove to the kitchen to break it down. There's lots of good meat on the jowls, and the skin is fantastic. There's also probably a good deal of fat between the two that you can trim off before serving. The ears should be devoured by the kitchen staff.

The recipe, from British Library Harleian MS 4016, transcribed in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books by Thomas Austin, is:

Pigge or chiken in Sauge. ¶ Take a pigge, Draw him, smyte of his hede, kutte him in .iiij. quarters, boyle him til he be ynow, take him vppe, and lete cole, smyte him in peces; take an hondefull. or .ij. of Sauge, wassh hit, grynde it in a morter with hard yolkes of egges; then drawe hit vppe with goode vinegre, but make hit not to thyn; then seson hit with powder of Peper, ginger, and salt; then cowche thi pigge in disshes, and caste þe sirippe þer-vppon and serue it forthe.

I roasted the pig's head, so the whole first part of the recipe, up through, "boyle him til he be ynow," is a wash, but the sauce still sounded good, so I made that. It was good, so good in fact, that I made it again in more reasonable quantities for Thanksgiving dinner to go with the goose.

• two hard-boiled egg yolks
• 1 Tbs fresh sage
• 1 Tbs red wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

If the sauce is too thick or not sharp enough, add a bit more vinegar. If it's too thin, add another bit of egg yolk. It has a lovely yellow color (that's it drizzled around the head in the pictures), and the acid helps to cut the lovely, fatty pig.