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Roast Sucking Pig

A whole pig stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, salt, cayenne, and butter, roasted for four hours and served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the pig dry.

  2. Stuff the body with bread crumbs, sage, salt, cayenne, and melted butter, mixing well.

  3. Sew up the pig to keep the stuffing inside.

  4. Cut off the feet.

  5. Place an apple in the pig's mouth.

Roast

  1. Score the skin.

  2. Baste the pig constantly with its own gravy.

  3. Roast for four hours.

Carve and make the sauce

  1. Split open the body.

  2. Remove the stuffing.

  3. Cut off the head.

  4. Split the head open.

  5. Take out the brains.

  6. Mix the stuffing and brains together, adding sherry, gravy, nutmeg, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  7. Serve this sauce in a gravy boat or as Piquante sauce.

  8. Serve apple sauce alongside the pig.

Finish basting

  1. Baste the pig initially with hot water mixed with a pinch of salt, then pour off the water.

  2. Baste the pig with olive oil.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and helps the skin brown.
Apple
Its sweet-tart flavor balances the rich pork.
Sherry
Adds a wine-like flavor and aroma to the brain sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Olive oil
Fat for basting that keeps the skin moist and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Baste the pig constantly with its own gravy. Drippings keep the skin moist and help it brown evenly over the long roast. Letting the surface dry out can leave it tough and unevenly colored.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, pepper, butter, sherry, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, pepper, butter, sherry, nutmeg, lemon. 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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