Skip to main content
Main

To Roast a Sucking Pig

A method for roasting a whole pig with a breadcrumb and herb stuffing, butter, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Roast a Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Scald and prepare the pig for roasting.

  2. Dry the pig and fill the body with bread crumbs, sage, butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

  3. Sew the pig up with strong cotton and truss it like a hare.

Roast

  1. Roast the pig over a strong fire, keeping it at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  2. Rub the pig with butter tied in cloth as it roasts.

  3. Place basins under the pig to catch the dripping gravy.

  4. When the pig is amber brown and steaming, dry it with a cloth and rub cold butter over it.

  5. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

Serve

  1. When ready, place the pig in a hot dish, remove the spit, and open the head and body.

  2. Chop the stuffing and brains, mix with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the drippings.

  3. Pour some gravy under the roast and serve the rest hot in a tureen, adding mace, cayenne, and lemon juice if desired.

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 + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Bulk up the stuffing and soak up butter and drippings for a moist filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns the skin as it bastes the pig.
Sage
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the stuffing.
Veal gravy
Forms the sauce that moistens the carved meat and stuffing when served.
Madeira or sherry
Adds depth and a sweet, fortified wine flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the pig at a moderate distance from the fire. Too close a heat scorches the skin before the thick body cooks through, while gentle, even heat lets the fat render and the skin brown evenly.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, veal, sherry, lemon. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes