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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A roast of a suckling pig stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, pepper, and veal gravy, served with gravy.

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

  2. Sew it up with strong cotton and truss it like a hare.

Roast

  1. Roast over a strong clear fire, keeping it at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  2. Once warm, rub it with butter using a cloth, repeating this while roasting.

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

  4. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate when it is half done to ensure even cooking.

  5. When the pig is light amber brown and steaming, wipe it dry and rub with cold butter.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. When ready, place the pig on a hot dish, open the head, and split the body in two.

  2. Chop the stuffing and brains together, mix with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the collected gravy.

  3. Pour some gravy under the roast and serve the rest hot 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 drippings and fat inside the body, forming a moist, flavourful stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the skin moist and promotes golden browning as it roasts.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavour that permeates the stuffing and the meat.
Veal gravy
Provides moisture and savoury body to the stuffing and the serving sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds sweetness and acidity that deepen the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the pig at a moderate distance from the fire. Too close a fire scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while regular basting with butter promotes even browning and a moist surface.

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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