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Roast Sucking Pig

A whole pig roasted over a clear fire, stuffed with sage and onion or veal forcemeat, basted with butter, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Roast Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Stuff the pig with sage and onion stuffing or veal forcemeat and sew it up with strong thread.

  2. Truss the pig like a hare, with its fore-legs skewered back and hind-legs forward.

  3. Dry the pig well.

  4. Dredge the pig with flour.

Roast

  1. Set the pig before a clear fire.

  2. Baste the pig with butter until it releases enough of its own gravy.

Carve and serve

  1. Cut off the head.

  2. Split the pig in halves.

  3. Lay the backs together with the ears on each side and the halves of the head at each end of the dish.

  4. Pour a little gravy over the pig.

  5. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice on top.

  6. Serve additional gravy in a sauce-boat.

  7. Offer bread, apple, or tomato sauce on the side.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Provides the main body of meat, which is cooked whole and then carved for serving.
Butter
Basting fat that helps the skin brown and the surface stay moist as it roasts.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps form a crisp, golden crust during roasting.
Sage and onion stuffing
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the meat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baste the pig with butter until it releases enough of its own gravy. Basting keeps the surface from drying out and promotes even browning. Stop only when the pig has released its own juices, since that gravy is what the dish is served with.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, flour, butter, bread. 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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