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To Roast Sucking-pig

A roasted suckling pig stuffed with sage, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt, served with apple sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

To Roast Sucking-pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and clean the sucking-pig, cutting off the feet.

  2. Stuff the inside with a mixture of sage, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt; sew up the slit.

Roast

  1. Roast the pig, basting with butter, for 2 to 3 hours until the skin is crisp and browned.

Serve

  1. Before serving, split the pig down the back and lay it flat with the skin side up.

  2. Cut off the head, split it in two, remove the brains, and place half the head at each end.

  3. Boil the liver, chop it with the brains, and mix with the gravy in a small serving dish.

  4. Serve apple sauce in a separate dish.

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 + peppertop 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 seasonings in the stuffing, giving it a moist, soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and basting with it helps the skin brown.
Beef gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the liver and brains serving mixture.
Apple sauce
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich pork.

The step that matters

Roast the pig, basting with butter. Basting keeps the surface moist while the fat renders, so the skin can crisp and brown rather than dry out or stay pale. Pork skin needs steady dry heat to blister and crackle.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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