Skip to main content
Main

Ragout of Roast Pig

A ragout of cold roast pig slices, mushrooms, butter, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Ragout of Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce and pig

  1. In a saucepan, combine gravy and mushrooms; heat to boiling.

  2. Add butter rolled in flour to the saucepan.

  3. Cut the slices of pig into nearly equal sizes; rub with pepper, salt, mace, and lemon peel.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the slices into the gravy and heat until very hot, but do not boil.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and lemon juice; simmer for three minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with crustless slices of fried bread.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pig
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying most of its savoury meaty flavour.
Mushrooms
Add soft texture and earthy savour that complements the meat and gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and, with flour, helps thicken the gravy smoothly.
Eggs
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they gently set with the heat.
Gravy or stock
Provides the liquid base and most of the sauce's savoury flavour.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that cut through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil once the eggs go in. Egg proteins set when heated, and boiling makes them tighten and curdle. Gentle heat lets the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, egg, lemon, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, egg, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes