Skip to main content
Main

Baked Sucking-fig

A whole pig stuffed with boiled organs, bread, and seasonings, then baked and served with a gravy.

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 ↓

Baked Sucking-fig

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 stuffing

  1. Boil the liver, heart, and lights in salted water until tender.

  2. In a frying pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and fry the grated onion slowly.

  3. Mince the boiled organs and add them to the onion.

  4. Soak the bread in cold water until soft, then squeeze out the water and mix it with the minced organs and onion.

  5. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, sage, and marjoram, and heat until scalding hot.

Bake the pig

  1. Stuff the pig with the mixture, sew it up, and truss the legs.

  2. Place the pig in a dripping pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 2.5 hours, basting with butter and hot water for the first hour, then with butter alone.

  3. If the ears and tail brown too quickly, wrap them in buttered paper.

  4. Once done, remove the stitches and keep the pig warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, place the dripping pan over heat, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour, and brown it.

  2. Add equal parts boiling water and wine or three parts water and one part mushroom or walnut catsup, and let it boil.

  3. Season the gravy with salt and pepper, and serve it with the baked pig.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  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

Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds bulk and moisture to the stuffing without making it heavy.
Liver, heart, and lights
Boiled and minced, they give the stuffing its rich, meaty body and savory flavor.
Onion
Slowly fried in butter, it becomes sweet and aromatic, flavoring the stuffing base.
Butter
Fat that enriches the onion and keeps the pig's skin moist and browned while basting.
Flour
Browned in the drippings, it thickens the gravy and deepens its color and flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the stuffing until scalding hot. The stuffing is made from cooked organs and bread, so it must be brought fully hot before it goes into the pig. Stuffing cold or lukewarm leaves the centre slow to reach a safe temperature during the long bake.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, bread, pepper, sage, marjoram, 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 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes