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Young Roast Pig

A roast pig prepared by seasoning, stuffing, and baking a young pig.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and turkey work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 830 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Young Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Select a young pig and have it dressed, leaving the head, feet, and tail intact.

  2. Rub the inside of the pig with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Lay thin slices of salt pork along the backbone.

  4. Fill the pig with dressing and sew it firmly with a cord.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the pig in a large baking pan with its knees turned under and a small cob in its mouth to keep it open. Add a little water to the pan.

  2. After 20 minutes, begin to baste the pig at regular intervals until it is brown and tender.

  3. Serve the pig on a platter on its knees, garnished with holly and mistletoe, and accompany with apple sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pork + turkeytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together830 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pepper + turkeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Young pig
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and brown over slow roasting.
Salt pork
Thin slices laid on the backbone add fat that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Dressing
Stuffing fills the cavity, absorbing juices and adding moisture and flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Basting at regular intervals. Basting starting after 20 minutes spreads fat and juices over the skin, helping it brown and keeping the meat from drying out during the long roast.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, turkey, sauce):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, turkey, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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