Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roasted Pig
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 160°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the pig
Plunge the pig into a boiler of hot water (around 160°F/70°C) and rub off all the hair with your hand.
Repeat this process two or three times until all the hair is removed.
Soak the pig for 24 hours and then hang it up to dry.
Roast
Stuff the stomach with a large piece of butter rolled in flour.
Roast the pig.
Baste frequently with good sweet oil for color.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Is the main subject of the dish, cooked whole.
- Butter
- Melts inside the stomach, keeping the meat moist as it roasts.
- Flour
- Coats the butter, helping it stay in place inside the cavity while roasting.
- Sweet oil
- Basting with oil promotes browning, giving the skin an even golden color.
The step that matters
Baste frequently with good sweet oil for color. Oil carries heat to the skin and promotes browning. Infrequent basting can leave the skin pale or dry, so the cook should baste regularly throughout roasting.
“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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