Skip to main content
Main

A Pig Matelote

A whole pig is braised with bacon, spices, vegetables, and wine, then served with a sauce of broth, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Pig Matelote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the pig's head and divide the body into quarters.

  2. Lard the quarters with bacon and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

  3. Layer bacon at the bottom of a kettle, place the head in the middle, and arrange the quarters around it.

  4. Add a bay leaf, chopped onion, lemon, carrots, parsley, and the liver, then cover with more bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in a quart of broth and stew for an hour.

  2. Transfer the pig to a stew pan, add a bottle of white wine, cover, and stew gently for an hour.

  3. Skim the fat from the first gravy, strain it, and set aside.

  4. In the meantime, stew sweetbread, truffles, morels, and mushrooms together until cooked.

  5. Thicken the sauce with egg yolks or butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Once the pig is cooked, place it on a serving dish, pour the wine sauce over it, and garnish with lemon slices.

  2. If serving cold, let it cool, drain, wipe it clean, and arrange on a dish with the head in the center and quarters around it, garnished with parsley.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Provides the meat, and collagen from the head and bones gives the stew body as it cooks slowly.
Bacon
Renders fat and salt into the meat, adding moisture and savoury flavour during the long stew.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, fatty stew.
Egg yolks or butter
Egg yolks or butter thicken the sauce, giving it a smoother, rounder texture.
Truffles
Contribute a strong earthy aroma to the sauce and garnish-level luxury.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Yolks thicken by setting when warm, but if the sauce boils they scramble and curdle. Whisk them into a little hot sauce first, then stir back in gently off the boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, clove, mace, lemon, carrot, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, clove, mace, lemon, carrot, parsley. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes