Skip to main content
Main

Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with bread crumbs, sage, salt, pepper, and butter, served with a sherry and lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pig

  1. Stuff the pig with dry bread crumbs, sage, salt, and pepper.

  2. Sew the pig up.

  3. Skewer the legs back to ensure crispiness.

  4. Dredge the pig with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the pig in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste frequently with melted butter.

  3. Rub the pig with a cloth wet with melted butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig whole on a platter.

  2. Garnish with parsley and celery tops.

  3. Remove some fat from the gravy.

  4. Thicken the rest with a little flour.

  5. Add sherry wine and lemon juice.

  6. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  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

Pig
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the skin crisps and the meat stays moist.
Dry bread crumbs
Stuffing that absorbs juices and adds bulk and texture inside the pig.
Melted butter
Fat for basting that promotes browning and a golden, crisp skin.
Flour
Dredged on the outside to help the skin brown and crisp.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, balancing its richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Skewer the legs back to ensure crispiness. If the legs are not held back, they can sag or cook unevenly, leaving some areas less crisp and the bird less evenly roasted. Keeping the legs positioned helps heat reach the skin consistently.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, flour, butter, sherry, wine, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, flour, butter, sherry, wine, lemon. 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.

More roast pig recipes

Stuffed 3 See all 115 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes