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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A roasted suckling pig stuffed with breadcrumbs, sage, butter, salt, pepper, and veal gravy, finished with Madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and prepare the pig, then dry it thoroughly.

  2. Stuff the body with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne, then sew it up.

  3. Truss the pig like a hare, with forelegs skewered back and hind legs forward.

Roast

  1. Roast 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 light amber brown, dry it with a cloth and rub with cold butter.

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

Serve

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

  2. Chop the stuffing and brains, mix with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the drippings.

  3. Pour some gravy under the roast and serve the rest in a tureen, adding mace, cayenne, and lemon juice if desired.

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 drippings and fat inside the stuffing, keeping it moist and soft.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the skin, promoting golden browning and a rich flavor.
Veal gravy
Provides moisture and savory body to the sauce served with the roast.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that balance the rich fat of the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the pig at a moderate distance from the fire. Too close a fire scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while the sugars and proteins in the skin brown best under steady, moderate heat.

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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