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Pig, Sucking, Stuffed

A suckling pig is stuffed with bacon, veal liver, ham, tongue, bacon strips, truffles, and herbs, then cooked in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pig, Sucking, Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Remove the bones from the suckling pig, leaving the head intact.

  2. Stuff the pig with bacon and veal liver, seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, sage, and basil.

  3. Layer slices of ham and tongue on top of the stuffing, followed by bacon and truffles.

  4. Shape the pig naturally and enclose it in a linen cloth with bacon, basil, and sage leaves.

Cook and cool

  1. Place it in a pan with stock broth, salt, and pepper, and cook at a very gentle heat.

  2. Allow it to cool in the cooking vessel to compress and remove excess liquid.

  3. Once cold, remove the cloth before serving.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together223 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

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

What each ingredient does

Suckling pig
Forms the main body of the dish, enclosing all the stuffing as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the stuffing moist as it cooks.
Veal liver
Adds richness and a dense, soft texture to the stuffing.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and a layer of meaty texture inside the pig.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma and luxurious flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Cooking at a very gentle heat. Low, gentle heat cooks the meat and liver through without toughening their proteins or drying out the fats, keeping the stuffing tender and moist.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, liver, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sage, ham):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, liver, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sage, ham. 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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