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Roast Pig

A whole pig roasted with mashed potatoes, butter, lard, and seasonings, served with a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 (200°C) 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 the pig.

  4. Wash the pig in cold water, changing the water two or three times.

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

  6. Place the feet with the 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 of the pig with salt and pepper.

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

  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 boiled feet, liver, and heart finely.

  2. Season the chopped meat.

  3. Thicken the meat with butter and flour.

  4. Serve the drippings from the pig as gravy.

  5. Prepare an alternative stuffing.

  6. Scald bread crumbs.

  7. Season the stuffing with salt, pepper, butter, sage, and chopped onion.

  8. Garnish the pig with a lemon, apple, or small orange in its 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. 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

Whole pig
Forms the main meat that is roasted whole and carved for serving.
Irish potatoes
Fill the body with a moist, starchy stuffing that absorbs roasting juices.
Lard
Adds fat that helps crisp the skin and carries flavor across the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the stuffing and the thickened meat.
Flour
Thickens the chopped meat and drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Turn the pig often. Frequent turning exposes all sides to the oven's heat so the meat cooks evenly and the skin browns rather than scorching in one spot.

Swap the onion

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

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

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