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Stuffing of Chestnuts for Pig

Chestnuts and pork sausage are stuffed into a pig, then served with a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stuffing of Chestnuts for Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Peel, scald and blanch the 50 chestnuts.

  2. Boil the chestnuts in 1 pint of milk with a pinch of salt and ½ ounce of butter until tender.

  3. Drain and dry the chestnuts.

  4. Mix the chestnuts with 1 pound of pork sausage meat.

Stuff the pig

  1. Remove the hair from the pig.

  2. Sew the pig securely.

  3. Stuff the pig with the chestnut and sausage mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Peel, scald and blanch the 6 ounces of chestnuts.

  2. Stew the chestnuts in ¾ pint of brown gravy until tender enough to be passed through a sieve.

  3. Mix the chestnut pulp with 6 tablespoons of rich brown sauce.

  4. Season the mixture with mace, cayenne, and salt if needed.

  5. Heat the sauce over the fire until it boils.

  6. Add a glass of Madeira or sherry to the sauce.

  7. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Provide the starchy, tender body of the stuffing and, once passed through a sieve, the thick sauce.
Pork sausage meat
Adds savoury richness and fat to the stuffing, moistening the chestnuts.
Milk
Softens the chestnuts as they boil, giving them a tender, creamy texture.
Brown gravy
Liquid that stews the chestnuts into a smooth pulp for the sauce.
Rich brown sauce
Adds depth and body to the sauce made from the chestnut pulp.

The step that matters

Passing the stewed chestnuts through a sieve. Chestnuts must be stewed until fully soft so they pass smoothly through a sieve; undercooked pieces leave a grainy, lumpy sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, milk, butter, pork, meat, sauce, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, milk, butter, pork, meat, sauce, sherry. 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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