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Roasted Pig

A whole pig roasted on a spit or flat iron, stuffed with sage, butter, salt, pepper, and dusted with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Roasted Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Spit the pig and lay it by a good fire at each end, or hang a flat iron in the middle of the grate.

  2. Before cooking, stuff the pig with sage, butter, salt, and pepper, then sew it up with coarse thread.

Roast

  1. Dust the pig well with flour and continue to flour it until the eyes drop out or the crackling is hard.

  2. Place basins or pans under the pig to catch the gravy as it cooks.

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. Walnut + sagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Dusted over the skin, it helps form a crisp, browned crackling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing as it melts during cooking.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Keep the pig turning and dusted with flour. Flour on the skin absorbs moisture and browns into a crisp crackling, while even turning cooks the meat evenly. Letting one side sit too long can scorch or leave it unevenly cooked.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

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