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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A whole suckling pig roasted with ghee and water, seasoned with salt, and stuffed with fowl-style stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Obtain a sucking pig from a reputable piggery, prepared for roasting.

  2. Truss the pig by breaking the joints of the legs, folding them, and securing with a skewer.

  3. Prepare stuffing as you would for roast fowl or duck and stuff the pig.

  4. Wash the pig thoroughly before roasting.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the pig, basting continuously with a mixture of ghee and water, along with some salt.

  2. Serve the pig in a sitting posture with a lime in its mouth, or in halves on a dish.

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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Provides the whole meat and skin that the roast is built around.
Ghee
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the skin brown during roasting.
Stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding flavour and moisture to the inside of the pig as it cooks.

The step that matters

Continuous basting. Basting with fat and water keeps the surface from drying out and helps the skin brown evenly. Letting the basting lapse can leave the skin dry and pale while the meat cooks.

“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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