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Roast Pig

A whole pig stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, water, and eggs, then roasted and served with parsley and celery garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the pig is thoroughly cleaned by your butcher. Examine the ears, mouth, head, and fat.

  2. If any hair remains, immerse the pig in hot water and scrape it off. Wash the pig inside and out, then wipe dry.

  3. Wrap the pig in a wet cloth to keep it from the air.

  4. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs with the melted butter, warm water or milk, and beaten eggs.

  5. Stuff the mixture into the pig, sew it up, and bend its feet under its body, securing them with skewers.

Roast

  1. Dredge the pig with flour and place it in a pan with a little hot water.

  2. Baste the pig with melted butter, then with the drippings as it cooks.

  3. Rub the skin with a cloth dipped in melted butter every few minutes to keep it soft and tender.

  4. Roast for about 2 hours or until fully cooked.

Serve and finish

  1. Serve the pig whole, garnished with parsley and celery tops.

  2. Skim the gravy, thicken with brown flour, and add hot water and lemon juice as needed.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking as one whole roast.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg mixture, forming a moist, tender stuffing inside.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together while roasting.
Melted butter
Adds fat that keeps the skin soft and promotes gentle browning.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a gravy.

The step that matters

Rubbing and basting the skin. Fat applied during roasting keeps the skin from drying out and helps it brown evenly. Basting too rarely lets the surface dry and toughen, so the skin may end up leathery rather than tender.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, milk, egg, flour, parsley, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, egg, flour, parsley, 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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