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A Delicate Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with sage, cayenne, salt, and a breadcrumb-salt pork stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Delicate Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Soak the pig in cold water overnight.

  2. Change the water in the morning and let it soak until ready to roast.

  3. Wipe the pig dry.

  4. Rub the inside of the pig with a mixture of sage, cayenne, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Stuff the pig with a dressing made of bread crumbs, chopped salt pork, black pepper, sage, sweet marjoram, and 1 egg.

Roast

  1. Place the pig on a rack in a dripping pan with some water and tied sprigs of sage and marjoram.

  2. Keep the pig well-floured until half done.

  3. Remove the pig.

  4. Wipe off the flour from the pig.

  5. Return the pig to the oven.

  6. Baste the pig with butter several times until fully roasted.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig on a large platter with a rose or small unhusked ear of green corn in its mouth.

  2. Thicken the gravy from the dripping pan with flour.

  3. Season the gravy with pepper and salt before serving.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Is the main meat, whose long soak and slow roast keep it moist and tender.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb dressing so it holds together inside the pig.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown as it is basted.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing as it renders.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the stuffing and soak up its juices.
Flour (in the method)
Coats the skin during early roasting and thickens the gravy from the pan drippings.

The step that matters

Keep the pig well-floured until half done. Flour coating shields the skin from fierce heat early on, and wiping it off before the final roast lets the skin crisp and brown.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, pepper, bread, pork, egg, butter):

  1. Marjoramthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, pepper, bread, pork, egg, butter. 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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