Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pig

Roast pig stuffed with mashed potato mixture and roasted until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the pig well and stuff it with the potato stuffing.

  2. To make the stuffing, mix mashed potatoes, softened butter, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sage.

  3. Sew the pig after stuffing it.

  4. Skewer the fore legs forward and the hind legs backward.

  5. Rub the pig with softened butter and sprinkle with flour, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the pig in a 400°F (200°C) oven with a little water in the pan.

  2. Baste often with melted butter to soften the skin.

  3. Bake for about three hours or until tender when tested with a fork.

  4. Arrange the pig on a platter in a bed of parsley, with a slice of lemon in its mouth.

  5. Serve with apple sauce or fried apples.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Forms the main body of the dish, which is roasted whole until tender.
Mashed potatoes
Fill the cavity as a moist, starchy stuffing that stays soft during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, and helps the skin soften and brown while basting.
Sage
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the potato stuffing.

The step that matters

Basting with melted butter. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and softens the skin as it roasts. Without it, the skin can dry out and turn tough during the long bake.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, pepper, sage, flour, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, sage, flour, parsley, 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.

More roast pig recipes

Stuffed 3 See all 115 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes