Roast Pig

History

Roast Pig is recipe No. 19 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking" (San Francisco, 1881). Abby Fisher begins with inspection — "Examine when it comes from the butcher and see that it is completely cleaned" — and directs that the pig "should be roasted the same way you would a turkey, well done." Her stuffing is fried bread: "take a loaf and one-half of baker's bread cut thin, fry the bread in butter or lard and mash it well; season it with salt and pepper according to taste, using a little red pepper." The pig is stuffed, an apple set in its mouth, basted with lard and then basted again every five or ten minutes throughout roasting, with a browned-flour gravy made in the pan afterward.

Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She could neither read nor write and dictated the book from "an experience of upwards of thirty-five years," and had won a diploma at the 1879 Sacramento State Fair and two medals at the 1880 San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair.

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular preparation, and What stands is Fisher's own method, set down in her name.

Ingredients

• 1 whole pig
• 1.5 loaves baker's bread
• butter or lard
• salt
• pepper
• a little red pepper
• 1 whole apple
• lard
• 1 tablespoonful flour
• a little water
• a little onion

Instructions

1. Examine the pig when it comes from the butcher and see that it is completely cleaned.
2. Cut a loaf and one-half of baker's bread thin and fry it in butter or lard.
3. Mash the fried bread well and season it with salt and pepper according to taste, using a little red pepper.
4. Add a little onion to the stuffing if desired.
5. Stuff the pig with this mixture and put an apple in its mouth.
6. Place the pig in the pan and baste it with lard.
7. Put it to roast and while it is cooking keep basting it every five or ten minutes.
8. Test for doneness when a fork passes through the pig easily.
9. After the pig is cooked, take about a tablespoonful of flour and put it in the pan where you cooked your roast.
10. Brown the flour well on the stove.
11. Add a little water to the pan and stir until the gravy commences to get thick.