Skip to main content
Main

Suckling Pigs

A whole suckling pig roasted with sage, salt, pepper, bread crust, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Suckling Pigs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Prepare the pig by placing sage, salt, black pepper, and brown bread crust inside its belly.

  2. Sew up the belly and roast the pig over a brisk fire with a pig plate to ensure even cooking.

  3. Rub the pig with butter frequently while roasting until it turns a fine brown.

Crisp and carve

  1. Once browned, dry the pig with a clean cloth and rub it with cold butter to crisp the skin.

  2. After roasting, place the pig in a dish, cut off the head, collar, ears, and jawbone.

  3. Split the jaw in two and lay the pig's sides with the back parts together, placing the jaw and ears on the shoulders.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Basting fat that browns the skin and, when cold, helps it crisp at the end.
Brown bread crust
Adds toasty, browned aroma and absorbs juices inside the belly as it roasts.

The step that matters

Drying the skin before the cold butter. Surface moisture turns to steam and blocks crisping, so the pig must be dried thoroughly with a cloth before the cold butter is rubbed on. Skin that is wet at this point will stay soft and leathery rather than crackling.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, 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 suckling pig recipes

Roasted 19Roast 13Roast 11 See all 15 →

You might also like

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