Skip to main content
Main

Koasting Meat

A whole pig roasted over a fire, basted with sweet dripping and butter, served with gravy and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Koasting Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the pig and sew the belly closed.

  2. Wipe the outside of the pig and rub it with salad oil or fresh butter.

Roast

  1. Cover the loins with greased writing paper and hang it over a good fire.

  2. Direct most heat to the rump and shoulders, as they need more cooking.

  3. Baste frequently with sweet dripping to prevent blistering.

  4. About 20 minutes before done, remove the paper and baste with butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig with the sides laid back to back, half the head on each side, and one ear at each end, crackling side up.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices and serve with rich gravy and either brain sauce or bread sauce.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Pig
Is the whole joint being roasted, so its size and fat set the cooking time and moisture.
Salad oil or fresh butter
Coats the skin so it can brown and crisp evenly in the heat.
Sweet dripping
Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and helps it brown rather than blister.
Butter
Added near the end for richness and golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Basting with sweet dripping. Frequent basting keeps the skin moist and evenly coloured. Without it, the surface can blister and dry out before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes