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To Roast

A whole pig roasted with bread stuffing, sage, butter, and egg, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Stuff the pig's belly with bread, sage, 2 tablespoons of butter, egg, salt, and pepper, then sew it up and skewer the legs back.

  2. Place the pig near a brisk fire until thoroughly dry.

  3. As it warms, rub the pig all over with a cloth dipped in the remaining butter.

  4. Dredge the pig well with flour, then scrape off the flour.

  5. Rub it again with the buttered cloth.

Serve

  1. Place the pig on a very hot dish.

  2. Cut it up.

  3. Mash the brains with a little gravy and some of the stuffing.

  4. Serve in a sauceboat.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked and sliced.
Bread
Forms the body of the stuffing and soaks up butter and juices.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the skin and promotes golden browning.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the skin brown and crisp.
Sage
Adds a herbal aroma that flavors the stuffing.

The step that matters

Dry the pig thoroughly before dredging. Surface moisture prevents browning and makes the flour clump and turn pasty instead of forming a dry, crisp coating. Drying by the fire first lets the skin become dry enough to take the flour and brown evenly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, pepper, flour. 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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