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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A roast suckling pig stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, pepper, veal gravy, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Wipe the pig dry.

  2. Fill the body with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

  3. Sew the pig up with strong cotton.

  4. Truss it like a hare.

Roast

  1. Roast over a strong fire at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  2. Rub the pig with butter tied in cloth as it roasts.

  3. Place basins under the pig to catch the dripping gravy.

  4. When the pig is amber brown and steaming, wipe it dry.

  5. Rub it with cold butter.

  6. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. When ready, place the pig in a hot dish.

  2. Open the head of the pig.

  3. Split the body in two.

  4. Chop the stuffing and brains together.

  5. Mix the chopped stuffing and brains with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the drippings.

  6. Pour some gravy under the roast.

  7. Serve the rest in a tureen.

  8. Add mace, cayenne, and lemon juice if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Forms the main roast; its fat and skin brown and crisp during roasting.
Bread crumbs
Absorb drippings and fat inside the body, forming a moist, savoury stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and helps the skin brown evenly.
Veal gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour to the stuffing and the served sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy.
Sage
Contributes a herbal aroma that complements the rich pork.

The step that matters

Roast at a moderate distance from a strong fire. Too close a fire scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while proper distance and regular basting with butter let fat render and the skin turn evenly amber brown.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon. 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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