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Roast Sucking Pig

A whole suckling pig roasted with bread dressing, butter, and apple garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Roast Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Truss the pig as it comes from the butcher.

  2. Lay it on its back and cut through the back bone for easy carving.

  3. Detach the ribs on one side and loosen the hip and leg joints.

  4. Wash and dry the pig, then stuff it with bread dressing.

  5. Sew up the pig with twine.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast for about 2 hours, covered with greased paper for part of the time.

  2. Baste with butter to achieve a golden brown skin.

  3. Make gravy in the roasting pan to serve around the pig.

  4. Serve apple sauce separately and place a small apple 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  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. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 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

Sucking pig
Forms the main joint of meat, which cooks slowly to tender, juicy flesh.
Bread dressing
Fills the cavity, absorbing juices and adding moisture and savory flavor to the meat.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and a golden, crisp skin.

The step that matters

Baste with butter to achieve a golden brown skin. Skin browns through the Maillard reaction and caramelization, which need dry surface heat. Fat helps the skin brown evenly and crisp, while the greased paper covering keeps the early roasting from drying out the meat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, 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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