Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Sucking-pig

A whole pig stuffed with sage, bread, salt, pepper, onion, and butter, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking-pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Prepare the pig by removing the entrails and washing it well in cold water.

  2. Stuff the belly with sage, bread, salt, pepper, and onion, then sew it up.

  3. Skewer the legs back to ensure even cooking.

Roast

  1. Place the pig by a brisk fire until it is thoroughly dry.

  2. Rub the pig all over with butter using a dry cloth.

  3. Dredge flour over the pig and do not touch it again until serving.

  4. Rub the pig with a buttered cloth and remove the head while cooking.

Serve

  1. Carefully scrape off the flour with a blunt knife or coarse towel before serving.

  2. Take out the brains and mix them with the gravy or form them into balls with bread crumbs and egg.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour 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

Sucking pig
Provides the main meat, which cooks slowly over a fire to become tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the skin brown and turn golden as it roasts.
Flour
Dredged over the skin to form a crust that crisps during roasting.
White bread
Soaks up juices inside the belly, adding moisture and body to the stuffing.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness to the stuffing as it cooks inside the pig.

The step that matters

Dry the pig thoroughly before roasting. Surface moisture must evaporate before the skin can brown and crisp. Drying by a brisk fire lets the skin dry out so the butter and flour can form a crust instead of steaming the skin.

Swap the onion

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

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

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