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Roast Pig

A whole young pig roasted with a fruit mixture of apples and prunes, flavored with sugar, anise, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Clean the pig and wash it in cold water. Dry the pig off.

  2. Cook the apples with ½ cup cold water until soft. Stir in 3 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Mix 2 teaspoons corn starch with 1 tablespoon cold water. Stir the corn starch mixture into the apple mixture. Boil the apple mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Cover the prunes with cold water and cook until soft, about 15 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons sugar to the prunes. Measure the prunes without juice.

  5. Mix the measured prunes with the same quantity of apples in a bowl.

  6. Rub 1 tablespoon anise seed through your hands to remove stems. Sift the anise seed. Mix the sifted anise seed with the fruit mixture.

Stuff and season the pig

  1. Stuff the pig with the fruit mixture. Sew the pig up.

  2. Place a small block of wood in the pig's mouth to keep it open.

  3. Season the pig with salt and pepper. Dredge the pig with flour.

Roast and baste

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons butter with 2 teaspoons flour for 1 minute in a baking pan. Add ½ pint hot water and the pig to the pan.

  2. Baste the pig often. Add a spoonful of hot water as needed.

  3. Cook for 2.5 hours until browned.

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. Anise + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Anise + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Corn + anisetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. 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

Young pig
Is the main meat, which browns and becomes tender during the long roast.
Sour apples
Break down into a tart, moist filling that balances the rich meat.
Dried prunes
Soften into a sweet, moist filling that adds depth to the stuffing.
Corn starch
Thickens the apple mixture into a glossy, spoonable filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan base, aiding browning of the skin.

The step that matters

Basting the pig often. Regular basting with pan liquid keeps the surface moist and encourages even browning, so the skin does not dry out or scorch during the long roast.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, anise, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, anise, pepper, flour, butter. 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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