Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pig

A whole young pig roasted with a savory dressing, butter, and optional wine, served with parsley or celery garnish.

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

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 dressing as for 'Dressing for Fowls,' adding chopped onion.

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

  3. Wipe the pig dry, salt the inside, and stuff it with the dressing.

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

Roast

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

  2. Once it begins to smoke, rub the skin with a rag dipped in melted butter to keep it crisp.

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

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, skim off excess grease, stir in flour, add water to desired consistency, and season with pepper.

  2. Let the gravy boil, strain, and add wine if desired.

  3. 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.

  4. 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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Young pig
Is the main meat, cooked whole so the skin crisps and the inside stays moist.
Butter
Basting fat that browns the skin and helps it crisp during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into gravy.
Baking soda
Rinse water component; raises the alkalinity of the rinse to help loosen surface grime and film.

The step that matters

Rubbing the skin with melted butter once it starts to smoke. Fat coating the skin at high heat promotes browning and crispness, while dry or unfatted skin can toughen and scorch. Basting regularly keeps the surface from drying out during the long roast.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, wine, parsley, celery. 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 roast pig recipes

Stuffed 3 See all 115 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes