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A Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with a savory cracker stuffing and a gravy made from liver, heart, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the pig's toes, leaving skin long to wrap around ends of legs, and place it in cold water.

  2. In a pot, combine powdered crackers, sage, summer savory, chopped onion, cream, eggs, pepper, and salt. Mix well and stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove pig from water, fill it with stuffing, and sew it up.

  4. Boil liver and heart with peppercorns, chop finely, and set aside for gravy.

Roast

  1. Place pig in roasting pan with 1 pint water and 1 tablespoon salt.

  2. Once it begins to roast, flour pig well and baste with drippings.

  3. Roast for 3 hours.

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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 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. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Summer savory + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help it set as it cooks.
Powdered crackers
Soak up cream and drippings to give the stuffing body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
Chopped onion
Adds savory aroma and depth to the stuffing.
Flour (in the method)
Helps the skin brown and crisp during roasting.

The step that matters

Flouring and basting the pig once it begins to roast. Flour and drippings build a browned, crisp skin. Adding them too early, before the surface has firmed, can cause them to clump or burn rather than brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, summer savory, cream, egg, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, summer savory, cream, egg, pepper. 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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