Skip to main content
Main

A Delicate Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with sage, cayenne, salt, and a stuffing of bread crumbs, salt pork, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Delicate Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Soak the pig in cold water overnight.

  2. Change the water in the morning and let it soak until ready to roast.

  3. Wipe the pig dry and rub the inside with a mixture of sage, cayenne, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Stuff the pig with a dressing made of bread crumbs, chopped salt pork, black pepper, sweet marjoram, and 1 egg.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the pig on a rack in a dripping pan with some water and sprigs of sage and marjoram tied in muslin.

  2. Flour the pig well until half done, then remove the flour and return it to the oven.

  3. Baste the pig with butter several times until fully roasted, about three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a large platter with a potato or small ear of un-husked green corn in its mouth.

  2. Thicken the gravy from the dripping pan with flour and season with pepper and salt before serving.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 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
Binds the bread crumb dressing so it holds together inside the pig.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the skin brown and stay tender while basting.
Flour
Dusted on the pig to form a crisp, browned crust, and used to thicken the gravy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the stuffing, giving it a moist, soft texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing as it renders during roasting.

The step that matters

Flouring the pig at the halfway point. Flour must be applied to the pig before it is fully cooked and then removed at the right time; applied too late or left too long, it can scorch or form a pasty, uneven crust instead of a crisp, browned skin.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Marjoramthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes