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Roast Pig and Tripe

A whole pig roasted over a clear fire, served with boiled and seasoned tripe.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Roast Pig and Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the pig

  1. Roast the pig over a clear fire, turning it regularly.

  2. Use a pair of bellows to blow off the flour from the pig.

  3. Rub the skin all over with a large piece of butter using clean linen.

  4. Continue rubbing for 15 minutes to achieve crisp crackling.

Prepare and cook the tripe

  1. For the tripe, clean and blanch it as directed.

  2. Cut the tripe into pieces, roll them up, and secure with thread.

  3. Place the tripe in a stoneware jar with pepper and salt, along with marrow-bone or veal trimmings.

  4. Submerge the jar in a pot of water and simmer for at least 8 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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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, cooked by roasting over open heat.
Butter
Rubbed on the skin to add fat, aiding browning and crisping of the crackling.
Tripe (in the method)
Becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in the jar.

The step that matters

Continue rubbing the skin for 15 minutes. Rubbing the skin with butter spreads fat evenly and helps the surface dry and brown. Uneven or insufficient rubbing can leave soft patches instead of crisp crackling.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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