Baked Pig
Take a pig about six weeks old, nicely prepared, score in squares, and rub lard all over it; make a dressing of two quarts of corn meal salted as if for bread, and mix to a stiff bread with boiling water; make into pans and bake. After this is baked brown, break it up, and add to it one-fourth pound of butter, pepper to taste, and thyme. Fill the pig till plump, sew it up, and place it on its knees in the pan, which fill with as much water as will cook it. Baste it very frequently with the gravy, also two red pepper pods. Turn while baking same as turkey, and continue to baste till done.
A whole suckling pig stuffed with cornbread dressing, written for a cook who already knew how to roast a turkey. The original gives no oven temperature and no timing, so those are the two things you have to supply.
- "A pig about six weeks old"A suckling or milk-fed pig, dressed weight roughly 15 to 25 lb. Order it from a butcher two weeks ahead and confirm it will fit your oven and your largest pan; anything over about 25 lb usually will not.
- "Nicely prepared"This means gutted, scalded, scraped and with the hair removed, head and feet on. A butcher will do all of it. Check the ear canals and around the trotters for stray bristles before you start.
- Oven heatNone is given. Roast at 325F throughout, or start at 425F for the first 20 minutes to set the skin and then drop to 325F. Reckon about 15 to 20 minutes per pound.
- The dressing is cornbreadTwo quarts of cornmeal "mixed to a stiff bread with boiling water" and baked in pans is plain water cornbread — no eggs, no leavening. Bake it at 400F until firm and browned, then crumble it and work in the butter, pepper and thyme. It can be made a day ahead.
- Stuff loosely, and check its temperature"Fill the pig till plump" is more packing than modern practice likes. Fill lightly enough for heat to penetrate, and take the reading in the center of the dressing as well as in the meat: 165F in the stuffing, 160F in the thickest part of the shoulder and ham.
- Water in the pan"As much water as will cook it" is vague; the phrase suggests a fair quantity, though a shallow layer topped up as it evaporates is enough to keep the drippings from scorching and to give you basting liquid. Avoid standing the pig deep in water if you want the skin to crisp.
- Score the skin, then leave it aloneCut the squares through the skin, and rub the lard in well. Frequent basting is what the recipe insists on; a foil collar over the ears and tail keeps them from charring, and some cooks cover the eyes or stuff the sockets.
- The pepper podsTwo dried red chile pods dropped into the pan liquid, not into the stuffing. They season the gravy. Strain and skim the pan juices before serving.
- Yield and carvingA 20 lb pig serves 12 to 16. Rest it 30 minutes, then take the shoulders and hams off whole and slice them, and cut the loin along the backbone. Serve the crackling in pieces.
Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Ohio in 1876 from contributed household receipts, and a baked pig belonged to the same category as a roast turkey: a set-piece for a large table. What marks this version as American is the stuffing — two quarts of cornmeal scalded into a stiff water bread, baked, crumbled and enriched with butter and thyme, a technique that produced the cornbread dressing still served across the Ohio Valley and the South. The instruction to set the pig "on its knees" is a presentation convention of the period, with the forelegs tucked under and the hind legs folded so the animal appeared kneeling on the platter. Suckling pig was practical on a farm in a way it is not now: a sow's litter could outstrip what she was able to raise, and a six-week-old pig was an animal a household could spare, whereas today it is a special order at several times the price per pound of grown pork.