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Roast Sucking Pig

A whole suckling pig roasted with lemon, sage, onion forcemeat, pepper, salt, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sage 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 ↓

Roast Sucking Pig

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Stuff the belly of the pig with the forcemeat and sew it closed.

  2. Truss the legs like a hare.

  3. Brush the pig well with salad oil.

Roast

  1. Roast the pig at 400°F (200°C) with a pig plate or a piece of iron hung in the middle; remove the iron when the pig is half cooked.

  2. Baste constantly during cooking.

  3. Roast for 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on the age of the pig.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove the trussing string and cut the pig down the middle, placing it back to back on the dish.

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. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 age sets how long it roasts.
Salad oil
Coats the skin so it browns and crisps evenly in the oven.
Sage and onion forcemeat
Fills the belly, adding moisture and flavour as the pig cooks.

The step that matters

Baste constantly during cooking. Basting keeps the surface moist and carries fat over the skin, which helps it brown and crisp rather than dry out. Stopping for long stretches lets the skin toughen and the heat dry the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sage, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sage, pepper. 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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