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Pig, Sucking, Stuffing For
A sucking-pig is usually filled with a stuffing prepared as follows. Take half a pint of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Mix with them a dozen sage-leaves, chopped small, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Moisten these with two ounces of clarified butter and the well-beaten yolk of an egg. One onion or more, chopped small, may be added or not, according to taste. Time, a few minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for one young pig.
A plain sage-and-bread forcemeat, sized for a whole sucking pig. The quantities are modest by modern standards and the measures are imperial, so both want translating before you commit.
- Half a pint of crumbsAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1 1/4 US cups. The weight depends on how dry the crumbs are: roughly 2 1/2 oz for soft crumbs, appreciably more if fully dried. Use crumbs from a firm white loaf, dried out but not toasted brown.
- Sage quantityA dozen fresh sage leaves chopped small comes to about a tablespoon, or 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of dried rubbed sage. Taste the mix before it goes in.
- Clarified butterTwo ounces of clarified butter is about 4 tablespoons of ghee, or 5 tablespoons of ordinary butter melted and the milk solids skimmed.
- Scale for the pig you haveThis makes something under two cups. The recipe calls that sufficient for one young pig; if yours is at the larger end, you may need to increase it.
- The hinge: temperature in the middleStuffing inside a whole pig is the slowest-heating part of the roast. The centre of the forcemeat must reach 165F/74C, and it will lag well behind the shoulder; check it with a probe rather than trusting the skin.
- Pack loosely, sew or skewerFill the cavity no more than three-quarters full so heat and steam can move through, then close it with trussing needle and string or metal skewers. A tightly rammed cavity is the usual reason the middle stays cold.
- Cook it separately if you preferThe same mixture bakes well in a buttered dish at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes, covered for the first 20, which removes the timing problem altogether.
- Probable costFourpence in pre-decimal money, a reminder that stuffing was the cheap element of an expensive roast. It carries no useful conversion.
Sage with pork is one of the oldest fixed pairings in English cookery, recorded in stuffings and sausage mixes for centuries before Cassell's, and the herb's slight bitterness is often said to cut the richness of fat meat. A sucking pig — killed at a few weeks, still on milk — was a set-piece dish for Christmas and other large tables, roasted whole with the skin scored for crackling and traditionally served with the head separated and an apple or lemon in the mouth. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for middle-class households and generally placed at the turn of the century and later, arranges such things alphabetically and dryly, listing cost and yield as a matter of course: the whole roast pig was by then, it seems, becoming an occasional showpiece rather than routine fare, and the entry reads as reference material for a cook who might need it once a year.