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Raked or Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with a bread and herb dressing, served with a gravy made from the pan juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raked or Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the innards and cut off the first joint of the feet.

  2. Boil the feet until tender, then chop them.

  3. Soak the bread in water, squeeze out excess water, and mash the bread finely.

Make the dressing

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs, and add a little butter.

  2. Fill the pig with the dressing.

Roast and serve

  1. Rub butter on the outside of the pig to prevent blistering.

  2. Bake or roast the pig for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  3. Add a little water to the pan.

  4. After cooking, mix some dressing and gravy from the pan with the chopped innards and feet.

  5. Add butter, pepper, and salt to the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fat pig
Provides the meat and fat that make up the body of the dish.
Bread
Soaked and mashed, it forms the body of the dressing that fills the pig.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing, the outside of the pig, and the sauce.
Sweet herbs
Add aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water from the bread. Bread soaked in water holds much more liquid than it can keep once filled. Removing the excess keeps the dressing thick and seasoned rather than soggy and diluted.

“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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