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To Roast a Sucking Pig

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the pig for roasting by rolling a small lump of butter in flour and chopped sage leaves, then place it inside the pig.

  2. Brush the outside of the pig with beaten egg whites using a small brush or bunch of feathers.

  3. Roast the pig for 1 to 1.5 hours, basting it with the gravy that falls.

  4. Once roasted, remove the sage leaves from inside, cut off the head, and split the pig down the back into quarters.

  5. Arrange the ears and head around the dish, and mix the caught gravy with chopped brains and sage leaves, along with a little cream or melted butter.

  6. Pour the sauce into the dish and serve the pig with various sauces: currant sauce, egg sauce, gravy, and plumped prunes or raisins.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, cream, currant, sauce, raisin):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, cream, currant, sauce, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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