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Roast Pig

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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, then sew it up.

  2. Skewer the legs back to ensure crispiness.

  3. Dredge the pig with flour and place it in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

Roast and baste

  1. Baste frequently with melted butter or rub the pig with a cloth wet with melted butter.

  2. Once cooked, serve the pig whole on a platter, garnished with parsley and celery tops.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove some fat from the gravy, thicken the rest with flour, then add sherry wine and lemon juice.

  2. 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, and its skin crisps and browns as it roasts.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb juices inside the cavity, keeping the stuffing moist and flavorful.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and promotes golden browning while roasting.
Flour
Dredging helps the skin brown and crisp; it also thickens the gravy.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy.

The step that matters

Baste frequently with melted butter. Basting keeps the surface from drying out while the fat renders, helping the skin brown evenly and stay crisp rather than tough.

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.

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