Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pig

A whole pig stuffed with bread, butter, milk, pepper, salt, and herbs, then roasted and basted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare a stuffing with bread, butter, milk, pepper, salt, and herbs.

  2. Stuff the pig and tie it with string to hold the stuffing.

  3. Dredge the pig with flour.

Roast

  1. Place it in a 300°F (150°C) oven to roast.

  2. Baste the pig with hot water and butter.

  3. Save the drippings for rebasting.

  4. Cook the pig slowly until done.

  5. Remove it from the oven.

  6. Rub the pig with ¼ pound of butter in a cloth.

  7. Return it to the oven to brown the skin.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig with an apple in its mouth.

  2. Arrange sweet potatoes around the platter.

  3. Optionally serve browned Irish potatoes that were cooked with the pig.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Flour + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Forms the main body of the dish, which is cooked slowly until done.
Butter
Adds fat for basting and rubbing, promoting moisture and browning of the skin.
Bread
Forms the base of the stuffing, giving it bulk and soaking up moisture.
Milk
Moistens the bread stuffing so it holds together softly.
Flour
Dredged onto the pig, helping the skin brown during roasting.

The step that matters

Return it to the oven to brown the skin.. Browning depends on dry surface heat, so the skin needs enough time in the oven after rubbing with butter to turn golden without burning.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, milk, pepper, flour, apple, sweet potato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, pepper, flour, apple, sweet potato. 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.

More roasted pig recipes

Whole 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes