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Roast Pig

A whole pig stuffed with mashed potatoes, roasted, and served with a sage gravy and citrus garnish.

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 ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pig

  1. Kill and clean the pig the evening before or very early in the morning.

  2. Scrape and wash the pig in cold water, changing the water two or three times.

  3. Cut the feet off close to the first joint and place them with the heart and liver in a saucepan to stew.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the body of the pig with mashed Irish potatoes seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and lard.

  2. Sew the body up and rub the outside with salt and pepper.

  3. Roast the pig in a 400°F (200°C) oven, turning it often and rubbing it with lard tied in muslin to crisp the skin.

  4. Cook the pig until golden brown and serve with a lemon, apple, or small orange in its mouth.

Make the sides

  1. Chop the boiled feet, liver, and heart finely, season, and stew with sage leaves.

  2. Thicken the drippings from the pig with flour, bring to a boil, and serve as gravy.

  3. Prepare an alternative stuffing with scalded bread crumbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, sage, and chopped onion.

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

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

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Is the main cooked meat; its skin crisps and its fat bastes the meat during roasting.
Irish potatoes
Fill the cavity, absorbing juices and fat so the stuffing stays moist and soft.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the potato stuffing, carrying flavor and moisture.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the skin brown and crisp when rubbed on during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.
Sage leaves
Add a savory, aromatic herb flavor to the stewed offal and stuffing.

The step that matters

Roast the pig in a 400°F (200°C) oven, turning it often. Turning exposes all sides to heat so the thick body cooks evenly, while rubbing with fat helps the skin crisp and brown rather than stay soft or burn in patches.

Swap the onion

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

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

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