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. Some use turkey-dressing instead of above. -Mrs. M. L. Blanton, Nashville, Tenn.
A whole suckling pig with cornbread dressing, from a book built out of contributed recipes. The method is sound; what it leaves out is size, temperature, and any notion of doneness.
- What "a pig about six weeks old" meansA suckling pig of that age dresses out at roughly 15 to 25 lb, depending on the animal. Measure your oven before ordering: anything over about 20 lb will not fit on a standard rack with the door shut. Order it dressed, head on, from a whole-animal butcher, and allow plenty of lead time.
- Oven temperatureThe book assumes a wood range and gives no number. Start at 450F for 20 to 30 minutes to set and blister the scored skin, then drop to 325F for the long roast, about 15 to 20 minutes per pound.
- The dressing is cornbread stuffingTwo quarts of cornmeal, salted "as if for bread" (about 2 teaspoons per quart) and slaked with boiling water, is a plain water cornbread. Baked, broken up and enriched with butter, pepper and thyme, it is the same procedure that underlies Southern cornbread dressing. Two quarts of raw meal makes far more than the cavity of a small pig will hold; bake the surplus in a dish alongside.
- Stuffing and temperatureThis is the hinge. A packed cavity insulates itself, so check the center of the dressing as well as the meat: the dressing should reach 165F and the thickest part of the shoulder and hind leg 160F or above. If the numbers disagree badly, cook the dressing separately and pack the cavity loosely.
- "On its knees"Fore and hind legs are folded under the body so the pig sits upright and the belly seam stays closed. Truss the legs in place with kitchen twine and prop the mouth open with a ball of foil if you want the traditional apple later.
- Water in the pan, and turningOnly enough water to keep drippings from scorching, an inch at most; more and the underside steams rather than roasts. The instruction to turn the pig as for a turkey is awkward with a stuffed and sewn carcass; in a modern oven you can roast it upright throughout and shield the ears, snout and tail with foil once they color.
- Red pepper podsWhole dried cayenne or similar, added to the pan liquid so the basting gravy carries heat. Two pods in a pan of drippings is mild seasoning, not a chili dish.
- Resting and yieldRest the pig 30 minutes before carving; the skin stays crisp and the joints separate cleanly. A 16 to 18 lb suckling pig with dressing serves 12 to 16.
The Dixie Cook-Book, first issued in the 1880s, carries many of its recipes under the names of Southern housewives — though compilations of this type also drew heavily on earlier printed sources — and this one carries Mrs. M. L. Blanton of Nashville's signature the way a church-supper card would. A whole suckling pig was celebration food across the South at Christmas and at large gatherings, and far more spectacular on the table than a beef roast. What marks the recipe as Southern rather than English is the dressing: where an eighteenth-century British cook would have stuffed a pig with breadcrumbs, sage and onion, Blanton bakes a pan of plain water cornbread, crumbles it, and works in butter, pepper and thyme, the same procedure that still produces cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. Her closing note that "some use turkey-dressing instead" is a reminder that in this period stuffing was understood as a portable formula, not something belonging to one bird or beast.