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Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted on a spit with a breadcrumb dressing and seasoned with salt, pepper, marjoram, cayenne pepper, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the pig by removing the feet, cleaning the head and ears, and removing the tongue and eyes.

  2. Wash the pig thoroughly and dry it.

Make and fill

  1. Make a dressing with bread crumbs, chopped onion, salt, pepper, marjoram, and enough butter to bind the mixture.

  2. Optionally, add spices and grated lemon to the dressing.

  3. If using potatoes, increase the butter in the dressing.

  4. Rub the inside of the pig with salt, cayenne pepper, and sage, then fill it with the dressing and sew it up.

  5. Rub the outside with salt, cayenne pepper, and sage.

Roast

  1. Place the pig on a spit before a clear fire, not too hot.

  2. Moisten the skin with melted butter using a sponge tied to a stick as it dries.

  3. Roast the pig for 3 to 4 hours.

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. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Keeps the dressing moist and binds the crumbs, and moistens the skin for browning during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the dressing, soaking up juices and giving the stuffing body.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the dressing as it cooks inside the pig.
Potatoes
Optional substitute for bread crumbs, giving the dressing a softer, moister texture.

The step that matters

Keep the fire clear and not too hot while roasting. A gentle, steady heat cooks the large body through before the skin over the thick parts burns. Basting the skin with butter as it dries helps it brown evenly and stay moist.

“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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