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Roast Pig

A whole young pig seasoned, stuffed with a bread crumb dressing, roasted, basted, and served with parsley, celery, and an apple garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pig

  1. Clean the pig thoroughly inside and out.

  2. Rinse the pig with salt, soda, and water, followed by cold water.

  3. Dry the pig inside and out.

Make and stuff the dressing

  1. Prepare the dressing by mixing bread crumbs, chopped onion, powdered sage, melted butter, coarse sea salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Moisten the dressing with soup stock.

  3. Stuff the pig with the dressing.

  4. Sew the pig up.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the pig in a kneeling posture.

  2. Dredge the pig with flour.

  3. Pour a little hot salted water into the dripping pan.

  4. Baste the pig with butter and water three times as it warms.

  5. Baste the pig with gravy from the pan.

  6. When the pig begins to smoke, rub it every 20 minutes with a rag dipped in melted butter to prevent the skin from cracking.

  7. Roast the pig in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

  8. Thicken the gravy with brown flour.

  9. Serve the pig on a dish garnished with parsley and celery tops, a wreath around the neck, and an apple in the mouth.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the dressing together and add richness to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the stock and butter to give the dressing body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks down in the pan.
Soup stock
Moistens the dressing so it is tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Rubbing the skin with melted butter as it smokes. Rubbing the skin during roasting keeps it supple and helps it brown evenly; without it, the skin can dry out and crack, as the record warns.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour. 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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