Head cheese.

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1801.  

        Thy ears and feet in souse shall lie;
  Minc’d sausage meat thy guts shall cram;
And each plump, pretty, waddling thigh,
  Salted and smoak’d, shall be a ham.
‘Verses addressed to a Hog,’: The Port Folio, i. 352 (Phila.).    

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1839.  I have often heard [your mammy] say she could not bear to make souse out of hog’s ears that had been torn by dogs. I will therefore take the dogs off, and leave you to tole or drive the hogs out.—Mr. Underwood of Kentucky, House of Repr., Jan. 16: Cong. Globe, p. 374, App.

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1839.  A recipe for souse is given in the Farmers’ Monthly Visitor, i. 74 (Concord, N.H.).

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1854.  ‘[I] can give you mush, souse, slap-jacks, briled pork,’ continued Bulliphant.—H. H. Riley, ‘Puddleford,’ p. 147 (N.Y.).

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1883.  The compiler of this glossary, being in Pennsylvania, was at a table where the landlady, addressing a boarder, said, “Mr. Strouse, will you have some souse?” The answer being a negative one, the compiler remarked, “That makes rhyme; Mr. Strouse refuses the souse.” Ah, but that’s not all, said C. G. at once; here it is in full:

        “Mr. Strouse refuses the souse;
          Souse, Strouse,
          Strouse, Souse;
  Abstemious Strouse,
  Oleaginous Souse.”

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