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To Roast a Sucking Pig

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Scald and prepare the pig for roasting, then dry it thoroughly.

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

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

  4. Roast the pig over a strong, clear fire at a moderate distance to avoid scorching.

  5. Rub the pig with a butter cloth as it warms, repeating this process while roasting.

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

  7. When the pig is light amber brown, wipe it clean and rub with cold butter.

  8. Hang a large flat iron in the center of the grate to ensure even cooking.

  9. When ready, place the pig on a hot dish, remove the spit, and open the head.

  10. Chop the stuffing and brains, mix with veal gravy and Madeira or sherry, and pour some under the meat.

  11. Serve the remaining gravy hot in a tureen, adding mace and lemon juice if desired.

  12. Serve with fine bread sauce and plain gravy, or currant sauce if preferred.

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

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. 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.

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