Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Sucking Pig

A whole pig stuffed with sage, breadcrumbs, pepper, and salt, roasted over a fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the sage very fine and mix it with bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the pig's belly and sew it up.

Roast

  1. Spit the pig and place it over a brisk fire with a pig-iron in the middle.

  2. Dredge the pig well with flour, but do not baste it.

  3. Within 15 minutes of being done, wipe off the flour with a clean cloth.

  4. Tie butter in a piece of cloth and rub it over the pig.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the head while cooking, take out the brains, chop them, and mix with the pig's gravy and melted butter or beef gravy.

  2. Cut the pig down the back and belly without removing it from the spit.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole over the fire.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and holding the sage.
Flour
Forms a coating on the skin that helps it brown and crisp as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat to the skin, promoting browning and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Wiping off the flour within 15 minutes of being done. Flour left on the skin can burn or taste pasty, so timing the wipe matters. Removing it near the end lets the skin finish browning cleanly and crisp.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, flour, butter. 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.

More roasted pig recipes

Whole 3 See all 44 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes