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Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with a bread and herb stuffing, served with a liver and heart gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Prepare the stuffing by mixing the crumbled bread, eggs, butter, sugar, thyme, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stiffen the stuffing with water.

  3. Heat lard in a frying pan and brown the stuffing mixture.

Roast the pig

  1. Stuff the pig with the browned mixture and sew up the opening.

  2. Truss the pig with front legs bent backward and back legs forward.

  3. Brush the pig with butter or salad oil and baste frequently.

  4. Cook until thoroughly done.

Make the gravy

  1. After removing the pig, make the gravy by adding a little water thickened with flour and mixing in the chopped liver and heart.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when browned.
Stale bread
Forms the bulk of the stuffing, absorbing moisture and giving it body.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and liver rather than running thin.
Lard
Fat for browning the stuffing, adding richness and browned flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the stuffing and to the brushing on the skin.

The step that matters

Cook until thoroughly done. A whole pig is thick and dense, so the center can stay undercooked while the outside browns. Cooking until the thickest parts reach full doneness is needed for safety, and the stuffing must also be fully heated through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, butter, sugar, thyme, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, butter, sugar, thyme, pepper, flour. 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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