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Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with mashed potatoes stuffing, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, lard, and sage, served with a citrus garnish.

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 ↓

Roast Pig

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pig

  1. Kill the pig.

  2. Clean the pig.

  3. Scrape and wash the pig in cold water, changing the water two or three times.

  4. Cut the feet off close to the first joint.

  5. Place the feet, heart, and liver in a saucepan to stew.

Stuff and roast

  1. Fill the body of the pig with mashed Irish potatoes seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and lard.

  2. Sew the body up.

  3. Rub the outside with salt and pepper.

  4. Roast the pig in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  5. Turn the pig often.

  6. Rub the pig with lard tied in muslin to crisp the skin.

Make the gravy and stuffing

  1. Chop the feet, liver, and heart finely.

  2. Boil them in clear water with sage leaves, then season highly.

  3. Thicken the drippings with flour.

  4. Boil the thickened drippings.

  5. Serve as gravy.

  6. Mix scalded bread crumbs with salt, pepper, butter, sage, and chopped onion for alternative stuffing.

  7. Mix cornmeal with egg yolks and seasonings.

  8. Bake the mixture in cakes.

  9. Use the cakes as stuffing.

Serve

  1. Serve the pig with a lemon or small orange in its mouth.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig
Provides the main meat, which cooks slowly until tender with crisp skin.
Irish potatoes
Fill the cavity, adding moisture and a soft, starchy texture to the stuffing.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the skin crisp and brown during roasting.
Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.
Egg yolks
Bind the cornmeal mixture so it holds together when baked into cakes.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the baked stuffing cakes, giving them a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Turn the pig often. Uneven heat can scorch one side while the rest stays underdone. Frequent turning lets the fat render and the skin brown evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, pepper, sage, flour, egg, lemon):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, sage, flour, egg, 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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