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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A roast suckling pig stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, butter, and seasonings, served with veal gravy and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Scald the pig and prepare it for roasting, then dry it.

  2. Fill the body with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

  3. Sew the pig up with strong cotton and truss it like a hare.

Roast

  1. Roast the pig over a strong fire, keeping it at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  2. Rub the pig with butter tied in cloth as it roasts.

  3. Place basins under the pig to catch the dripping gravy.

  4. When the pig is amber brown, wipe it dry.

  5. Rub the pig with cold butter.

  6. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. When ready, place the pig in a hot dish and remove the spit.

  2. Open the head and split the body.

  3. Chop the stuffing and brains together.

  4. Mix the chopped stuffing and brains with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the collected gravy.

  5. Add mace, cayenne, and lemon juice if desired.

  6. Pour some gravy under the roast.

  7. Serve the rest hot in a tureen.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and its fat helps the skin brown as it roasts.
Veal gravy
Adds savory moisture and flavor to the stuffing and the serving sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and a fortified wine aroma that deepens the sauce's flavor.
Sage
Contributes a herbal aroma that flavors the stuffing and the rich meat.

The step that matters

Roast over a strong fire at a moderate distance. Too close scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while too far gives pale, soggy skin. Basting with butter and turning for even heat helps the skin brown evenly without burning.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, 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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