BRAWN OVER BRAINS

English Naval Admin and Parlimentarian Samuel Pepys mentions eating brawn in his memoirs, but it's uncertain what form he meant giving that the definition was in transition at the time.

Brawn used to connote meat or muscle of any kind; the word "brawn" still connotes muscle, i.e. I might refer to Conan the Barbarian as "brawny," or a lithe aesthete might hold fast to sayings such as "brain over brawn."

By the 1400s, brawn was often used to mean meat from wild pigs, and then later applied to just domestic pigs. As time carried on, it came to connote pork that was brined, flavoured, boiled and moulded. By the 1800s, brawn had come into its own.

In the South, the word "souse" is used to refer to brawn. Souse, though, tends to be a bit more tangy and pickled than what passes for "traditional" brawn because of the addition of various types of vinegar.

Souse is a very old English term: 'Good bread and good drinke, a good fier in the hall, brawne, pudding and souse, and good mustard withall' (Thomas Tusser 1573).

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