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Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with potato stuffing, butter, herbs, and served with apple sauce or fried apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Select a pig that is 3 weeks old and wash it well.

  2. Prepare the stuffing by mixing mashed potatoes, softened butter, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sage.

  3. Stuff the pig with the potato mixture and sew it closed.

  4. Skewer the forelegs forward and the hind legs backward.

  5. Rub the pig with softened butter and sprinkle with flour, salt, and pepper.

Roast

  1. Place the pig in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) with a little water in the pan.

  2. Baste often with melted butter to soften the skin.

  3. Bake for about 3 hours or until tender when tested with a fork.

Serve

  1. Arrange the pig on a platter in a bed of parsley, with a slice of lemon in its mouth.

  2. Serve with apple sauce or fried apples.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Is the main cooked item; its tender meat and crisping skin are the goal of the roast.
Mashed potato
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and body so the inside stays soft during roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin soften and brown while basting.
Flour
Sprinkled on the skin, it helps the surface dry and brown as it roasts.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the stuffing as it cooks inside the pig.

The step that matters

Basting the skin. Basting with melted butter keeps the surface from drying out and helps the skin soften and brown. Regular basting keeps the fat distributed over the skin during the long roast.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, sage, flour, parsley, 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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