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Collared Sucking Pig

A preserved pig boiled with vinegar, salt, and spices, then cooled and served with a caudle of oatmeal, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Collared Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Rub the inside of the cleaned and boned pig with pepper, coarse sea salt, and powdered herbs.

  2. Roll the pig up tightly and bind it in a cloth, tying it securely.

Boil and set

  1. Prepare a boiling liquid with water, vinegar, salt, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and savoury herbs.

  2. Boil the pig softly until tender.

  3. Remove the pig and, when nearly cold, tighten the bandage.

  4. Place the pig in a pan and pour over the cold liquid it was boiled in.

Optional caudle

  1. Optionally, some housekeepers use a caudle made of oatmeal, white wine, and spices.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Clove + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,715 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Provides the meat that is cooked tender by slow simmering in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the boiling liquid, giving the preserved meat a sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture as it is cured.

The step that matters

Boil the pig softly until tender. A gentle simmer cooks the meat evenly and keeps it moist, while a hard boil can toughen the outer layers and break the meat apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, clove, white wine):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, clove, white wine. 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.

More suckling pig recipes

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