Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pig

A whole young pig roasted with onion dressing, salt, butter, and optional wine, served with gravy.

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 the pig

  1. Prepare dressing as for fowls, adding chopped onion; set aside.

  2. Wash the pig thoroughly inside and out.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix water with baking soda and rinse the inside of the pig again.

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

  5. Sew the pig up and place it in a kneeling position in a roasting pan, tying the legs properly.

Roast

  1. Pour a little hot salted water into the 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 crisp.

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

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Make gravy by skimming off most grease, stirring in flour, and adding water to desired consistency.

  2. Season gravy with pepper and let it boil once; strain and add wine if desired.

  3. Serve the pig on a large hot platter, garnished with parsley or celery tops, and decorate with a green wreath and celery sprig.

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

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

Pig
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole so its skin crisps and its interior stays moist.
Butter
Fat that is brushed on the skin, helping it brown and crisp as it roasts.
Flour
Thickens the skimmed pan juices into a gravy.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the rinse water, which can help the skin brown and crisp.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the dressing that fills the pig.

The step that matters

Keeping the skin crisp while roasting. Skin only crisps if its surface stays dry and fat-coated; basting with butter and wiping it dry help it brown, while too much moisture makes it soft and leathery.

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