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Roast Pig

Roast Pig is a whole young pig roasted with a dressing, butter, and seasonings, served with garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare your dressing as for Dressing for Fowls, adding half an onion chopped fine.

  2. Wash the pig thoroughly inside and outside, then rinse the inside with water mixed with baking soda.

  3. Wipe the pig dry with a fresh towel, salt the inside, and stuff it with the prepared dressing.

  4. Sew it up and place it in a kneeling posture in a dripping pan, tying the legs in position.

Roast

  1. Pour a little hot salted water into the dripping pan and baste with butter and water as the pig warms.

  2. When it begins to smoke, rub it often with a rag dipped in melted butter to keep the skin from cracking.

  3. Roast for 2 to 3 hours, basting regularly.

Make the gravy

  1. Make the gravy by skimming off most of the grease, stirring in flour, and adding water to achieve the right consistency.

  2. Season with pepper and let it boil once, then strain and add wine if desired.

Serve and carve

  1. Serve the pig on a large hot platter, garnished with parsley or celery tops, a green wreath around the neck, and a sprig of celery in its mouth.

  2. To carve, cut off the head first, then split down the back, and remove the hams and shoulders.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Young pig
Forms the main body of the dish, with its skin and meat cooking together during roasting.
Butter
Basting fat that keeps the skin moist and helps it brown while roasting.
Flour
Thickens the defatted pan juices into a smooth gravy.
Baking soda
Rinse that helps loosen residues on the skin during cleaning before roasting.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Rubbing the skin with butter as it begins to smoke. Dry heat can split and toughen the skin before the fat has rendered. Regular basting with melted butter keeps the surface supple and encourages even browning.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, wine, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, wine, parsley. 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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