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Cox a Geees

A wild pig stuffed with roasted chicken, pine nuts, sage, and stuffing, then boiled and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pine and sage share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 61 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the stuffing with pine nuts and sage.

  2. Take the roasted chicken, pull it into pieces, and mix it with the stuffing, saving the legs.

Stuff and cook

  1. Skin the pig from the middle down, fill it with the stuffing, and sew it shut.

  2. Place the stuffed pig in a pan and boil it well.

  3. Once cooked, place it on a spit and roast it thoroughly.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pine + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together61 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pine + nutstop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Chicken + pinetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Chicken + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together894 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fars (stuffing)
Fills the pig's cavity, adding moisture and savory flavor as it cooks.
Pine nuts
Add a rich, buttery crunch and toasty flavor to the stuffing.
Roasted chicken
Provides cooked meat and fat that blend into the stuffing, adding moisture and savory depth.

Flavor stand-ins for the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pine, sage):

  1. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  2. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Beansbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pine, sage. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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