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Roast Little Pig
The pig should be about three weeks old.
The butcher draws and scrapes it, but the cook must clean it. Cover the point of a wooden skewer with a piece of soft cloth, and work the skewer into the ears to clean them. Cleanse the nostrils in the same way, and also the vent near the tail. Scrape the tongue, lips and gums with a sharp knife, wipe them with a soft cloth, and take out the eyes. Wash the pig well with cold water, wipe dry, and rub a tablespoon of salt on the inside. Make the following stuffing: Three pints of bread crumbs; three teaspoons of salt; one-half teaspoon of pepper; one tablespoon of powdered sage; three tablespoons of butter; one chopped onion. Mix well together, first rubbing the butter into the crumbs, and then adding the seasoning; and fill the body with the stuffing. Press the fore feet forward and the hind feet backward, and skewer them to position. Force the mouth open, and place a small block of wood between the teeth. Butter two sheets of paper and pin them about the ears. Sprinkle the pig with salt, rub it all over with soft butter, and dredge with flour. Then place it in the roasting-pan, and cook at least three and one-half hours, basting every fifteen minutes with butter or salad oil, and sprinkling lightly with salt and flour after each basting. Water should not be used, if the surface of the meat is desired crisp. Remove the paper from the ears during the last half hour. When ready to serve, remove the block from the mouth, inserting in its place a small ear of corn or a small lemon. Serve apple sauce with this dish. In carving a roast pig, the head is cut off first, the meat split down the back, the hams and shoulders taken off and the ribs separated.
A whole suckling pig is still sold by most whole-animal butchers, usually to order and usually frozen. The recipe assumes you know your oven and your bird-sized roasting pan; the notes below fill in what it leaves out.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; ranges of the period were judged by eye and hand rather than by a dial. Three and a half hours of basting implies a moderate oven, and in a modern oven something in the region of 325-350F would suit, with a short spell at higher heat at the end if the skin has not crisped. This is an inference, not the book's instruction.
- Size of the pigDressed weight varies a good deal; suckling pigs of about this age are usually sold somewhere between roughly 10 and 20 lb. Measure your oven before ordering: many domestic ovens will not take a large pig even laid diagonally, and the pan must sit flat.
- Doneness, not clock timeThree and a half hours is a reasonable estimate for a 15 lb pig, but cook to an internal reading of 160F at the thickest part of the shoulder and ham, away from bone. Take a second reading in the centre of the stuffing.
- Stuffing measuresThree pints of bread crumbs is 6 cups; the weight depends on how dry they are, from around three-quarters of a pound of soft crumbs to well over a pound of dry ones. The seasoning is assertive, since it has to carry a great deal of meat: a tablespoon of dried sage is roughly three tablespoons of chopped fresh. Note that the recipe calls for powdered sage.
- Buttered paperEars, snout and tail scorch long before the loin is cooked. Buttered paper pinned in place was the period solution; loosely moulded foil does the same job and comes off in the last half hour, as directed.
- No water in the panThis is the hinge of the whole method. Any liquid in the pan steams the skin and it will not crackle. Baste with fat only, and dredge with flour after each basting to build the crisp surface.
- The block of woodIt holds the jaws open and leaves room for the corn or lemon at the table. Any clean, untreated hardwood block or a solid ball of foil works; avoid softwoods, which resin, and anything varnished.
- Resting and carvingLet the pig sit 20-30 minutes before the head comes off, or the juices run out with the first cut. Carving is easier with the pig on a board rather than a platter.
- YieldA 15 lb suckling pig serves about 12, generously, since a good deal of the weight is bone and head.
Roast suckling pig is one of the oldest festival dishes in the English kitchen, and by the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, generally dated to around the turn of the twentieth century, it is often said to have been more ceremonial than everyday, appearing at Christmas and at large family dinners rather than on the weekly table. The elaborate cleaning instructions here — skewer and cloth for the ears and nostrils, the eyes taken out — reflect a period when the cook received the animal from the butcher only roughly dressed and finished the work herself. Butterick was a pattern company that expanded into domestic manuals, and its cook book was aimed at housekeepers attempting a set piece of this kind, with the carving sequence spelled out at the end. The lemon or ear of corn in the mouth is the same convention that more often appears as an apple; the apple sauce served alongside is the more practical half of the pairing, its acidity cutting the fat of a young, very rich animal.