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To Roast a Sucking Pig

A whole pig roasted on a spit, stuffed with bread crumbs, sage, butter, and spices, served with veal gravy and Madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the pig

  1. Scald and prepare the pig for the spit, then wipe it dry.

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

  3. Sew it up with strong cotton.

  4. Truss the pig with fore legs skewered back and hind legs forward.

Roast

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

  2. Rub the pig with butter tied in muslin while roasting.

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

  4. When the pig is light amber brown, wipe it dry. Rub it with cold butter.

  5. Hang a pig iron or large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

Serve

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

  2. Split the body in two.

  3. Chop the stuffing and brains. Mix them with veal gravy, Madeira or sherry, and the pig's gravy.

  4. Pour some gravy under the meat.

  5. Serve the rest hot in a tureen, adding pounded mace, cayenne, and lemon juice.

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
Forms the main meat, which cooks slowly so the skin browns and the flesh stays moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and drippings in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat that bastes the skin, promoting browning and a rich flavour.
Veal gravy
Adds moisture and savoury body to the sauce served with the pig.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that deepen the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Roast at a moderate distance from a strong, clear fire. Too close a fire scorches the skin before the thick meat is cooked through, while the fire must stay strong enough to brown it evenly.

Swap the mace

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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