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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A roast suckling pig stuffed with sage, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper, then roasted and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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. Scald the pig in hot water for 30 seconds to remove hair.

  2. Wash the pig thoroughly with warm water, then rinse in cold water.

  3. Remove the feet at the first joint and take out the entrails.

  4. Stuff the belly with sage, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper, then sew it up.

  5. Skewer the legs back to ensure even cooking.

Roast and finish

  1. Roast over a brisk fire until dry, then rub the pig with butter.

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

  3. Carefully scrape off the flour with a blunt knife.

  4. Remove the head and brains, mixing the brains with the gravy.

  5. Cut the pig down the back and belly, and serve with the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Is the main meat; its skin crisps and its flesh cooks through during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the skin, helping it brown during roasting.
Flour
Dredged over the skin, it helps form a crisp, golden crust as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Fill the belly, absorbing juices and adding moisture and body to the stuffing.
Sage
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the stuffing as the pig roasts.

The step that matters

Scrape off the flour gently. The flour crust must be dry and set before scraping. Scraping too early or with too much force can tear the skin and remove the crisp, browned layer beneath.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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