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Pig, Sucking, Scalded
A sucking pig is generally sent from the butcher's ready for the spit, but for the benefit of those who find it necessary to prepare it themselves the following directions are given. Put the pig into cold water directly after it is killed, and let it remain for five minutes, then take it up, and hold it by the head in a large pan of boiling water for two minutes. Lay it on a table, and rub the hairs off with a coarse cloth. If they do not come off easily, put the pig in the water another minute. When quite clean, make a slit down the belly, and take out the entrails, leaving the kidneys untouched. Cut off the feet at the first joint, and leave a small portion of skin to fold neatly over the end. Clean the nostrils and ears thoroughly, wash the pig in two or three waters, and with a cloth dry it, inside and out, then wrap it in a damp cloth until it can be cooked. The feet, the heart, and the liver of a sucking-pig are generally served separately.
This is a dressing procedure rather than a cooked dish, and it assumes the animal has just been killed on the premises. Almost no modern cook will need the whole sequence, but the scalding technique is still how a whole pig gets its skin cleaned.
- Order it dressedThe first sentence remains the best advice: a butcher who handles whole pigs will supply one scalded, gutted and ready to roast. Suckling pig is usually a special order, and a dressed weight of roughly 10-20 lb is typical for an animal of a few weeks old.
- "Ready for the spit"In Cassell's day this meant trussed for a horizontal spit before an open fire. A modern equivalent is a whole pig laid on a rack in a large roasting tin, or on a rotisserie or covered barbecue, since a domestic oven will only take a fairly small carcass.
- The hinge: water hot but briefTwo minutes in boiling water loosens the hair follicles; much longer and the skin itself begins to cook and will tear under the cloth, ruining the crackling. If the hair resists, the recipe's instruction to return the pig for a single further minute is the right approach rather than a longer first dip.
- Why the cold water firstThe recipe does not say why the pig goes into cold water for five minutes directly after killing; the obvious purpose is to cool the freshly killed carcass before the hot dip.
- Finishing the skinAfter the cloth, stubborn bristles were traditionally taken off with a blunt knife scraped against the grain and any remaining down singed off over a flame. Modern practice uses a disposable razor or a blowtorch, followed by another wash.
- Kidneys left inThe kidneys were deliberately left in place so that they roasted with the carcass. The heart, liver and feet were, as the recipe says, generally served separately.
- Holding the dressed pigThe damp cloth was a larder practice from a period without refrigeration. A dressed pig should now be kept covered at refrigerator temperature until it goes to the fire, and roasted the same day.
- FeetCutting at the first joint and folding a flap of skin over the stump gives a tidy line on the platter, which is what the recipe's 'neatly' is after.
Whole roast suckling pig was a British and Continental feast dish long before Cassell's, and it survived in nineteenth-century cookery books precisely because it was a set piece: a small animal that could be cooked entire, brought in whole, and carved at table. Its literary monument in English is Charles Lamb's A Dissertation upon Roast Pig (1822), which fixed the taste for the crisp skin of a young pig in the popular imagination. That the entry is addressed to those who must dress the animal themselves is a reminder of how recently the boundary between butchery and cookery ran through the domestic kitchen. The dish faded from English tables in the twentieth century as ovens shrank and whole-carcass butchery moved out of the home, though it remains standard festive fare in Spain, Portugal, the Philippines and much of China.