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Baked Pig

A whole pig baked with potatoes, parsnips, lettuce, lemon pudding, and jelly cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 54 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Baked Pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake the pig

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare the pig for baking.

  3. Place the pig in the oven and bake until fully cooked.

Make the sides

  1. Boil or mash the potatoes.

  2. Fry the parsnips until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with fresh lettuce.

  2. Prepare lemon pudding and jelly cake for dessert.

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. Parsnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Parsnip + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Provides the main protein, which firms and browns as it cooks through.
Potatoes
Starch softens when boiled or mashed, giving a soft, filling texture.
Parsnips
Frying browns their natural sugars, adding sweetness and a golden crust.
Lettuce
Adds cool, crisp texture and fresh moisture against the hot, rich dishes.

The step that matters

Bake the pig until fully cooked. A whole pig is thick, so heat must travel to its center for the meat to reach a safe internal temperature. Oven setting alone does not confirm doneness, so the thickest parts need checking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, parsnip, lettuce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsnip, lettuce. 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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