Skip to main content
Main

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
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Scald the pig.

  2. Prepare the pig for roasting.

  3. Dry the pig.

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

  5. Sew the pig up with strong cotton.

  6. Truss the pig like a hare.

Roast

  1. Roast the pig over a strong fire.

  2. Keep the pig at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

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

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

  5. When the pig is amber brown, dry it with a cloth.

  6. Rub the pig with cold butter.

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

Serve

  1. Place the pig on a hot dish.

  2. Open the head.

  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, adding 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat in the stuffing, keeping it moist and tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and crisp.
Veal gravy
Provides moisture and rich savoury flavour for the sauce served with the pig.
Madeira or sherry
Adds fortified wine sweetness and depth to the gravy.
Sage
Contributes a herbal aroma that flavours the stuffing.

The step that matters

Keep the pig at a moderate distance. Too close to a strong fire scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, so the outside burns while the inside stays underdone. Basting with butter and turning the pig to hold a steady, moderate heat lets the fat render and the skin brown evenly.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes