Name: Roast Pig
Ingredients: 1 pig; 2 cups bread crumbs; 2 teaspoons sage; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon pepper; flour for dredging; ½ cup melted butter; water for gravy; green parsley or celery tops for garnish

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 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

Scald and clean the pig carefully.
Make a dressing of bread crumbs, sage, salt, and pepper; stuff the pig and sew it up.
Fasten the legs back so the under part will crisp nicely.

Roast

Dredge the pig with flour and place it in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).
Baste frequently with melted butter.

Make the gravy and serve

When done, pour off the fat from the top of the drippings, add water to the remainder, and thicken for gravy.
Serve the gravy in a dish and stand the pig up on a platter, garnished with green parsley or celery tops.

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.

Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pig: Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole so its skin crisps and its interior becomes tender.
Bread crumbs: Absorb juices and fat inside the cavity, keeping the stuffing moist and giving it body.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the skin, helping it brown and crisp as it roasts.
Flour: Dries the surface of the pig and helps the skin brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Basting with melted butter. Frequent basting spreads fat over the skin, keeping it from drying out and helping it brown evenly as it roasts.

Swap the sage

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

Marjoramfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Sagethe original
Capersfits about as well

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