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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A whole pig roasted with bread crumbs, sage, butter, and veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Wipe the pig dry.

  2. Fill the body with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Sew it up with strong cotton.

  4. Truss it like a hare.

  5. Tie it in muslin or thin cloth.

Roast

  1. Roast it over a strong fire, keeping it at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  2. Rub the pig with butter as it warms.

  3. Place basins under the pig to catch the dripping gravy.

  4. When it turns light amber brown, wipe it dry.

  5. Rub it with cold butter.

  6. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

Serve

  1. Place the pig on a hot dish.

  2. Open the head.

  3. Split the body.

  4. Chop the stuffing and brains.

  5. Mix them with veal gravy, Madeira, and the pig's gravy.

  6. Pour some gravy under the meat.

  7. Serve the rest in a tureen.

  8. Add pounded mace.

  9. Add lemon juice 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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 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 + 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

Sucking pig
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and crisp-skinned during slow roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the fat and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist rather than greasy.
Butter
Adds fat that browns the skin and keeps the meat moist as it roasts.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury body and moisture to the stuffing and the serving sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds a fortified wine flavour and sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the pig at a moderate distance from the fire. Too close a fire scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while the heat must stay strong enough to brown and crisp it. Rubbing with butter and turning the pig help the skin colour evenly.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, 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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