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Roast Pig

A whole young pig stuffed with a sweet and savory fruit mixture, then roasted with butter and flour.

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 stuffing

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

  2. Dry the pig off.

  3. In a saucepan, cook the apples with cold water until soft.

  4. Stir in sugar and corn starch mixed with cold water.

  5. Boil for 5 minutes and remove from heat.

  6. Cook the prunes in enough cold water to cover them until soft.

  7. Add sugar 15 minutes before they are done.

  8. Measure the cooked prunes without juice and mix with the same quantity of apples.

  9. Add anise seed and mix well.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the pig with the fruit mixture and sew it up.

  2. Place a small block of wood in its mouth to keep it open.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and dredge with flour.

  4. In a baking pan, melt butter with flour for 1 minute.

  5. Add hot water and the pig.

  6. Brown the pig and baste often with hot water for 2.5 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. After lifting the pig, add water to the gravy, stir, and season with salt.

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

Apples
Break down into a soft, moist filling that sweetens and flavours the stuffing.
Corn starch
Thickens the apple mixture into a glossy, spoonable filling as it boils.
Dried prunes
Add concentrated sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the stuffing.
Flour
Coats the pig and, cooked with butter, forms a base that helps the gravy thicken and brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan base, supporting browning and flavour in the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the pig and baste often with hot water. Roasting a whole pig for a long time dries the outer skin and meat. Regular basting with hot liquid keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly rather than scorch or toughen.

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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