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Roast Sucking Pig

A whole suckling pig stuffed with sage and onion forcemeat, roasted and served with bread sauce, apple and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and apple work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Roast Sucking Pig

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the belly of the pig with sage and onion forcemeat.

  2. Truss the pig like a hare.

  3. Brush the pig with salad oil.

Roast

  1. Bake or roast for about 2 hours, basting frequently.

  2. When done, remove the trussing string.

Carve and serve

  1. Cut the pig down the middle from head to tail.

  2. Place the halves back to back on a dish with half the head and an ear on each side.

  3. Serve with bread sauce, apple and tomato sauce, or any good flavored sauce.

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 + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sucking pig
Forms the main body of the dish, and its fat and skin brown and crisp during roasting.
Sage and onion forcemeat
Fills the belly, adding moisture and savory aroma as the pig cooks.
Salad oil
Coats the skin, helping it brown evenly and stay crisp in the oven.
Bread sauce with currants
Adds a creamy, mild contrast to the rich roasted meat.

The step that matters

Basting frequently during the roast. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and helps the skin brown evenly. Without it, the skin can dry out and turn leathery or patchy before the inside is fully cooked through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, onion, bread, sauce, apple):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, onion, bread, sauce, apple. 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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