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Roast Sucking-pig

A roasted pig served with butter, apple sauce, currant sauce, and optional melted butter for brains and stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Roast Sucking-pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste the pig with butter or pure salad oil to ensure crisp crackling.

  3. Roast the pig for 1.5 to 2 hours, until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig hot, with one half of the head on each side and an ear at each end.

  2. Optionally, stir the brains and stuffing into melted butter instead of gravy.

  3. Accompany with apple sauce and currant sauce.

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. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Butter or pure salad oil
Fat that helps the skin brown and turn crisp as it roasts.
Sucking pig
Main meat; slow roasting cooks the thick flesh through while the skin crisps.

The step that matters

Basting the pig before roasting. Fat coats the skin and helps it blister and crisp in the oven. Skin left dry or unbasted tends to stay tough and pale rather than crackling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apple, sauce):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, sauce. 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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