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Roast Pig

A whole young pig roasted with onion dressing, salt, butter, and optional wine, served with parsley or celery garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Prepare the dressing as for "Dressing for Fowls," adding chopped onion.

  2. Wash the pig inside and out.

  3. Rinse the pig with water mixed with baking soda. Dry the pig with a fresh towel.

  4. Salt the inside of the pig.

  5. Stuff the pig with the dressing.

  6. Sew the pig up.

  7. Place the pig in a kneeling position in a dripping pan.

  8. Tie the pig's legs.

Roast

  1. Pour hot salted water into the pan.

  2. Baste the pig with butter and water as it warms.

  3. When the pig begins to smoke, rub it with a rag dipped in melted butter to keep the skin crisp.

  4. Roast the pig for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Baste the pig regularly during roasting.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim off grease from the pan to make gravy.

  2. Stir in flour to the gravy.

  3. Add water to the gravy to desired consistency.

  4. Season the gravy with pepper.

  5. Boil the gravy once.

  6. Strain the gravy.

  7. Add wine to the gravy if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig on a large hot platter.

  2. Garnish the pig with parsley or celery tops.

  3. Decorate the platter with a wreath and celery.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Young pig
Provides the main meat, which is roasted whole and stuffed.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the skin and helps it brown and crisp.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into gravy.
Baking soda
Rinses the pig to help loosen the surface before drying.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavour to the stuffing dressing.

The step that matters

Rub the skin with melted butter when the pig begins to smoke. Fat applied as the skin heats helps it crisp and brown evenly. Skin that is left dry or unbasted can turn leathery while the meat cooks.

Swap the onion

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

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

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