Skip to main content
Main

Barbecued Pig

A whole pig roasted with butter, salt water, vinegar, catsup, and seasonings, then garnished with parsley and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Barbecued Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pig in cold water until ready to use, then wipe it dry inside and out.

  2. Rub the pig with melted butter and place it in the oven with hot salt water.

  3. For a whole pig, mix bread crumbs, suet, parsley, sage, and salt, then dredge the pig with flour, salt, and pepper.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the pig with water and melted butter until there is enough dripping in the pan.

  2. When half done, brush the pig with olive oil (or butter), pepper, and vinegar, basting every few minutes.

  3. When thoroughly cooked, add catsup and a piece of butter, then let it dry in.

Finish and serve

  1. Garnish the dish with parsley and serve with apple sauce.

  2. Place an apple or orange in the pig's mouth before serving.

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. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the skin brown and crisp.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the fatty meat.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and helps form a browned, glossy glaze on the surface.
Bread crumbs
Provides bulk for the stuffing and coating, soaking up fat and giving body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and savory during roasting.

The step that matters

Basting every few minutes after the pig is half done. Once the pig is half cooked, its surface can dry out and brown unevenly. Regular basting with fat and liquid keeps the skin moist and builds an even, flavourful glaze.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, bread, parsley, sage, flour, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes