Skip to main content
Main

Baked or Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with a bread and herb stuffing, finished with buttered skin and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Baked or 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. Remove the innards and the first joint of the feet from the pig.

  2. Boil the tender parts and chop them finely.

Stuff and roast

  1. Mix the soaked bread with the chopped feet, pepper, salt, sage, and butter to make the stuffing.

  2. Fill the pig with the stuffing and rub a little butter over the skin to prevent blistering.

  3. Roast or bake the pig at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours, adding a little water to the oven.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, mix the remaining stuffing with gravy from the pan for a sauce.

  2. Expose the pig to open air for 2-3 minutes before serving, rubbing it with butter to crisp the skin.

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. Pepper + sagetop 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. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Forms the main meat; its skin and fat become crisp and browned during roasting.
Bread
Soaked and pressed, it absorbs juices and gives the stuffing a moist, soft body.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and crisping on the skin and enriches the stuffing.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that seasons the stuffing.
Dried sage
Contributes an earthy, aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Rubbing butter on the skin and drying it in open air. Fat on the skin helps it brown and crisp, while brief air exposure dries the surface so it does not stay soft. Skipping either step can leave the skin leathery or pale.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter. 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.

More roast pig recipes

Stuffed 3 See all 115 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes