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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A whole pig roasted with bread crumbs, sage, butter, and seasonings, served with veal gravy and optional mace, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

  1. Dry the pig thoroughly after scalding and preparing.

  2. Stuff the body with bread crumbs, sage, 2 ounces of butter, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

  3. Sew the pig up with strong cotton.

  4. Truss the pig like a hare.

Roast

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

  2. Rub the pig with a cloth tied with butter while roasting.

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

  4. When the pig is light amber brown, dry it with a clean cloth.

  5. Rub the pig with cold butter.

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

Carve and serve

  1. When ready, place the pig in a hot dish.

  2. Open the head of the pig.

  3. Split the body of the pig.

  4. Chop the stuffing and brains together.

  5. Mix the chopped stuffing and brains with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the drippings.

  6. Pour some gravy under the roast.

  7. Serve the rest of the gravy in a tureen.

  8. Add 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

Sucking pig
Is the main meat, whose skin browns and crisps as it roasts over the fire.
Bread crumbs
Absorb drippings and butter inside the stuffing, giving it body and keeping it moist.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor on the skin when basted.
Veal gravy
Supplies savory moisture and body for the sauce served with the pig.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity that lift the flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the pig at a moderate distance from the fire. Intense direct heat browns and burns the skin before the thick interior cooks through. A moderate distance lets the heat penetrate gradually, so the skin turns golden and crisp rather than scorched.

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.

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