Head Cheese & Souse: Presssack, Presskopf

To start, I'll use the general term "head cheese," a food product that dates back at least several hundred years to the use of cooked hog heads or beef heads, as well as sometimes the cooked internal organs, ears, tails or feet of these animals. The meat was then stripped off and put back into the broth, which would set up because of the gelatin-like nature of the broth, brought about by collagen extracted from the animal parts while they were cooking. Later, commercially marketed gelatin was often added to cooked meats, vegetables, and/or hard cooked eggs to make these kinds of foods. Generally such a dish has been called "aspic" or some specific terrine. Head cheese has long been popular among German cultures; that is, German areas outside of Germany, as well as within areas that have come to comprise Germany itself.  

When I was a kid, people in my neighborhood called it, "hog's head cheese," and I do still see some use that more fully descriptive terminology, although most often I see just "head cheese" nowadays. In the U.S., if the same basic product had vinegar in it, was/is called "souse." A few old timers back then called it "sultz" or "presskop," as my neighborhood had been a destination for a large number of German immigrants from the 1850s until right before World War One, and these were forms of German "Sulz," a south German term and Sülze in many other areas, and "Presskopf," literally, "pressed head (meat)." Don't get comfortable, because there are even more regional names in German, one of which is "Presssack (yes, 's' three times in a row), as well as "Schwartenmagen," "generally" used more in the Alemannic German dialect areas of southwestern Germany and Switzerland (perhaps in the Alsace part of France too, where that is the German dialect), and there is also "Schweinskopfsülze," and there are likely even more terms. In England and Britain, in general, the term for this food is "brawn."

German areas have long had "pauses" in the workday for some food and drink (some areas have this "break" in mid morning, others in mid or late afternoon), and this is besides lunch. There are also many terms for these "breaks": Brotzeit (much of Bavaria, literally "bread time"), Vesper (yes, from the religious term, and used in southwestern Germany), zweites Frühstück ("second breakfast," used in northern Germany), Gabelfrühstück (literally, "fork breakfast," some parts of Austria), Marende (in the South Tirol, a word German got from Italian), Jause (Austria, a word German got from Slovenian), Zvieri (Switzerland), and German has also picked up the word "Brunch" from English, a combination of "lunch" and "breakfast." Trust me, I'm certain there are more! This dish is not an uncommon part of a "work break," although there are variations to it. 

Ingredients:

head cheese and/or souse (brawn)
onion, cut into rings
oil
vinegar
sugar
black pepper
salt

Mix the oil, vinegar and sugar together well in a bowl or cup. Roll up a couple slices of head cheese and/or souse and put them on a plate, top them with some freshly sliced onion rings, then spoon some of the dressing over this. Sprinkle on some salt and black pepper to taste. Serve with rye or pumpernickel bread, along with some butter.   

I had some pickle spears along side ...

WORD HISTORY:
Sward-This is not a common word in American English (also Canadian English?), but it is still used somewhat in the UK and it has some literary/poetic use. Whether the ultimate origin of this word is Indo European is uncertain, although Latvian^ has a form meaning, "swine skin." While far from a certainty, it is very possible the Latvian word is a borrowing from Low German, as many Low German speakers had a great deal of contact with the Latvians dating well back in history. Anyway, Old Germanic had "swardu," seemingly with the meaning, "thick, hairy skin;" thus also, "skin of the head (skin under or covered with hair"). This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "sweard," meaning, "tough skin, hide/rind;" thus also the figurative, "turf" (skin with grass, Earth's hide/skin). This then became "sward," but the main meaning shifted to the existing figurative meaning, "turf/sod," and in fact, the compound, "greensward" came into being; perhaps as an English rendering of Low German "grönswarde"  or Old Norse "grassvörðr," separated out as "gras" and "svörðr" (=svörthr), literally, "grass(y) skin," but actually, "an area of earth covered with grass;" thus also, "meadow land." Relatives of "sward" in the other Germanic languages: German has "Schwarte" (thick, hairy skin/, usually of a hog; rind on bacon), Low German "Swoor" (thick skin/rind and earlier spelled as "swarte"), Dutch "zwoord" (bacon rind), Frisian once had "swarde," but I'm not sure about a form in modern times, Danish "seems" to only still use the compound with a form of "sward" in it, "grønsvær" (turf), Norwegian "svor" (rind), Icelandic "svörður" (turf). I didn't find a form in modern Swedish.    

^ Latvian is a Baltic language of Indo European derivation; thus, it is related to English, but further down the family tree. In more modern times linguists have generally put the Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) in with the Slavic languages as, "Balto-Slavic." True Prussian was also a Baltic language, but it died out in the 1700s. I say "true Prussian," as Prussia was once a region of the Baltic people "Prussians." Germans took over the region and mixed with the Prussian population and the German language prevailed, but the Germans still called the region "Prussia" (Preussen/Preußen, in German), which became one of the main German states and rose to be the main rival of Austria as the leading German state. Eventually it was Prussia that united Germany into a modern nation, but not until 1871.