This recipe is a key part of the story of the monstrous Turk, especially in the use of a pig’s skin. There is no evidence that the skin used in a Turk’s Head pie ever came from an actual Turk, but the stomach casing is significant in its reference to the Islamic prohibition against eating pork, which Europeans knew well. By using swine to create an image of a Muslim, one symbolically insulted Islam through a culinary act.

DEFINE: Explains how the Turk's Head pie's pig-skin casing functioned as deliberate anti-Muslim symbolism, leveraging the Islamic prohibition on pork.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 334