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Sucking Pig

A roast suckling pig baste with hot water, sea salt, salad oil, bacon, and served with apple or tomato puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the pig

  1. Roast the suckling pig before a brisk fire, basting it with hot water and a pinch of coarse sea salt in the dripping pan.

  2. Replace the water with salad oil and continue to baste.

  3. Rub a piece of fat bacon up and down the crackling to keep it from scorching and to make it crisp.

Make the garnish and serve

  1. Make balls with onion, sage, and breadcrumbs.

  2. Coat the balls with breadcrumbs and eggs.

  3. Fry the coated balls for garnish.

  4. Serve with a puree of apples or tomatoes.

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 + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Egg + appletop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sage + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat bacon
Rubbed over the crackling, it adds fat that helps the skin crisp and resist scorching.
Eggs
Bind the coated balls so the breadcrumb coating holds during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form the body of the stuffing balls and the crisp outer coating when fried.
Salad oil
Replaces the water in basting, conducting heat to brown and crisp the skin.

The step that matters

Rubbing the crackling with fat bacon. Pork skin scorches before it crisps when it dries out over a hot fire. A fat coating shields the surface and carries fat into the skin, helping it turn crisp and evenly golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, egg, apple):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, egg, apple. 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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