Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
To Bake a Sucking Pig
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pig
Clean and stuff the pig as you would for roasting.
Mix the raw egg yolk with the salad oil and rub it all over the pig.
Cover the ears with well-buttered paper.
Roast and serve
Send the pig to the bakehouse with the butter wrapped in a clean rag for basting.
Prepare gravy and sauce to serve with the pig.
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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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 cut of meat that is roasted whole.
- Raw egg yolk
- Adds richness and helps the skin brown evenly when rubbed on.
- Salad oil
- Carries the egg yolk over the skin and helps it crisp and brown.
- Butter
- Used for basting, adding moisture and a golden color to the skin.
The step that matters
Covering the ears with buttered paper. Ears are thin and small, so they scorch and burn quickly in the oven. A buttered paper cover slows browning and protects them while the rest of the pig roasts.
“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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