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Sucking Pig

A roasted pig stuffed with veal, served with a sauce made from pig brains and optional apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Rub the sucking pig very dry and coat it with flour.

  2. Stuff the pig with veal stuffing.

  3. Roast the pig until the skin is crisp.

  4. Cut off the head.

  5. Divide the body and head in halves lengthwise.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a sauce with the brains and either brown sauce or white melted butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Serve the sauce over the pig and apple sauce separately in a boat, if desired.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sucking pig
Provides the main meat, whose skin crisps during roasting.
Flour
Coating dries the skin surface so it can brown and crisp in the oven.
Veal stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour to the meat as it roasts.
Brains of the pig
Enriches the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body when cooked.

The step that matters

Roast the pig until the skin is crisp. The skin must be dry before roasting, since surface moisture steams it instead of letting it blister and crisp. Patting it very dry and coating it with flour helps it brown evenly, while the meat underneath needs to cook through without drying out.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, pepper, sugar, sauce):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, pepper, sugar, 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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