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Baked or Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted or baked with a bread, pepper, salt, sage, and butter stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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, chopped feet, pepper, salt, sage, and butter to make the stuffing.

  2. Fill the pig with the stuffing and rub the outside with butter to prevent blistering.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, mix the chopped feet with some dressing and gravy from the pan for a sauce.

  2. Before serving, expose the pig to open air for 2-3 minutes and rub 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 body of the dish, so its size and cooking time set the whole method.
Bread
Soaked and pressed, it absorbs moisture and forms the body of the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the outside brown and crisp.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Rubbing the skin with butter before roasting. Butter coats the skin so it cooks evenly and resists blistering, while fat in the surface helps it brown and crisp. Skipping it can leave the skin tough or patchy.

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.

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