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Pig, Sucking, Stuffing of Potatoes For
Potatoes mashed with milk, and seasoned with pepper and salt, are sometimes used as a stuffing for roast sucking pig. Any of the ordinary sauces may be sent to table with this dish.
A one-line entry that assumes you already have a sucking pig on the spit and only want to know what to put inside it. The gaps are all in quantity and consistency.
- How much to makeThe entry gives no quantity. As a rough working figure, a sucking pig of around 10-12 lb dressed will take something like 2-2.5 lb of potatoes, mashed, to fill the cavity without packing. Weigh the potatoes before peeling and allow a little over.
- Make it stiffer than table mashUse only enough hot milk to bring the potatoes together. A loose, creamy mash slumps out of the cavity when the pig is turned and turns to paste in the heat; the stuffing should hold its shape on a spoon.
- Season harder than you thinkPepper and salt are the whole seasoning here, and potato absorbs both. Season the mash until it tastes slightly over-salted on its own, since it will be diluted by the fat and juices it takes up during roasting.
- Sucking pig todayA whole milk-fed pig of roughly 10-20 lb is a special order from a butcher or farm, usually with notice. Whether it fits a domestic oven whole depends on the oven and the pan; the larger sizes generally will not, and the front and back legs need trussing forward and back to fit a large roasting pan.
- Sew or skewer the cavityThe entry says nothing about closing the pig, but a stuffed cavity has to be secured: skewers and butcher's string do the job. Leave the stuffing slightly loose so heat can reach the centre.
- Check the stuffing, not just the meatStuffing inside a large carcass is the slowest part to heat. Take the temperature at the middle of the potato as well as at the thickest part of the shoulder; both should reach 165F/74C.
- "Any of the ordinary sauces"The entry does not say which. The sauces ordinarily sent up with roast pork include apple sauce and a plain brown gravy made from the pan drippings.
- YieldA 12 lb sucking pig with this stuffing serves about eight to ten, the stuffing carved and spooned out with each portion.
Roast sucking pig was a set-piece of English festive cookery from the medieval period through the nineteenth century, and Cassell's treats it as a standard dish rather than a curiosity. The usual filling was a bread stuffing enriched with the pig's liver, sage and onion; potato was the cheaper and blander option. The entry's brevity is characteristic of the dictionary format: the main article on the pig carries the roasting method, and cross-referenced entries like this one supply only variations. Sucking pig fell out of everyday English cooking in the twentieth century, though it survives in Spanish, Portuguese, Filipino and Chinese cooking, where it never left the table.