Suckling pig

Piglet fed on its mother's milk

Slaughtered piglets in Madrid marketRoast sucking-pigs, Segovia, SpainSucking-pig served at St John restaurant, London A sucking-pig (BrE) or suckling pig (AmE) is a piglet fed on its mother's milk (i.e., a piglet which is still being "suckled"). In culinary contexts, a sucking-pig is slaughtered before the end of its second month. Celebrated since Greek and Roman times, it is traditionally cooked whole, usually roasted, in various cuisines, and is often prepared for special occasions and gatherings. A variation is popular in Spain and Portugal and their former empires under the name lechón (Spanish) or leitão (Portuguese), but the dish is common to many countries in Europe, the Americas and east Asia. Its popularity in Britain and the US has declined since the 19th century.

[edit] According to Larousse Gastronomique, a piglet – in French a porcelet – is defined as a sucking-pig if it is below the age of two months. The Oxford Dictionary of Food and Nutrition defines the age as four to five weeks. It may weigh as little as three or four kilos (6.6 – 8.8 lbs). Mrs Beeton recommended putting the slaughtered piglet into cold water briefly and then immersing it in boiling water, before pulling off the hair and removing the entrails. In his 1907 Guide to Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier wrote, "Stuffed or not stuffed, sucking pigs are always roasted whole, and the essential point of the procedure is that they should be just done when their skin is crisp and golden".

[edit] 16th-century multilingual dictionary giving the words for "sucking-pig" in Latin, Greek, German, French, Italian, Spanish and English Many recipes for sucking-pig survive from ancient times. Andrew Dalby in his Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece (1996) draws attention to the precise and differentiated Greek vocabulary for categorising pigs of varying ages and sizes, and observes that "sucking-pigs, galathenoi, were a particular delicacy". Ancient Chinese and Roman cuisine valued the dish: Alan Davidson comments, "the Romans certainly liked sucking pig". In her 1985 Food and Cooking in Roman Britain, Jane Renfrew writes, "Sucking pig was roasted in the oven and then served with a thickened sauce flavoured with pepper, lovage, caraway, celery seed, asafoetida root, rue, liquamen, wine must and olive oil". Apicius's fifth-century cookery book De re coquinaria (About Cooking) contains several recipes for sucking-pig, including porcellum assum tractomelinum (stuffed with pastry and honey) and porcellum farsilem duobus generis (stuffed in two ways – one stuffing being a mixture of pepper, lovage, oregano, celery seed, cumin, fennel seed and rosemary, and the other containing laser root, cooked brains, raw eggs and boiled spelt). The sucking-pig appears in early texts such as the sixth-century Salic law. The first recorded use of the term in English dates from 1553: "Yonge suckynge pygges, porci delicicode: lat promoted to code: la ". The Oxford Companion to Food (OCF) comments, "Sucking pigs are sometimes referred to as suckling pigs; this is incorrect, since it is the mothers who suckle and the young who suck". In the sixteenth century a common alternative term was "roasting pigs". Sucking-pigs were widely used in medieval cookery, and when it became more usual for pigs to be farmed than hunted in forests a larger proportion would be killed and sold as sucking-pigs. In the 18th century Hannah Glasse and in the 19th century Mrs Beeton published recipes for them, "always the most favoured way of cooking them"; Mrs Beeton stipulates, "A sucking-pig, to be eaten in perfection, should not be more than three weeks old, and should be dressed the same day that it is killed". The OCF adds, "in recent times sucking-pig has become less and less usual in England and the USA".

[edit] There are many variations in Western and Asian cuisines:

Europe, except Iberia[edit] In his 366 Menus and 1200 Recipes in French and English (1884) the French gourmet Baron Brisse includes "cochon de lait rôti – roast sucking-pig". He suggests stuffing the piglet with fresh butter seasoned with chopped herbs, salt and pepper or with chopped liver, bacon, mushrooms, capers, mixed herbs, salt and pepper. Cochon de lait Saint-Fortunat is stuffed with a mixture of cooked barley, the piglet's liver, herbs, chipolata sausages and braised chestnuts and roasted. Other French versions of sucking-pig are:

cochon de lait à l'américain (stuffed with a mixture of liver and sausage meat); —à l'alsacienne (Alsatian style) – stuffed with pork sausage meat mixed with braised sauerkraut and the diced sautéed pork liver, roasted —à la bavaroise (Bavarian style) – brushed with oil and roasted, deglazed with thick veal gravy and served with potato dumplings and coleslaw made with diced bacon —à l'anglaise (English style) – filled with sage and onion stuffing, roasted; apple sauce mixed with blanched currants served separately —à l'allemande (German style) – stuffed with apple slices and currants, roasted; à l'italienne (Italian style) boned, stuffed with risotto mixed with grated Parmesan and diced salami, roasted —à la farce de foie de porc (with liver stuffing) – stuffed with a mixture of butter, eggs, soaked bread and the piglet's boiled chopped liver. seasoned with nutmeg and roasted —à la piemontaise (Piedmont style) – stuffed with risotto mixed with grated white truffles, roasted; served with a light tomato sauce —à la polonaise (Polish style) – stuffed with braised shredded cabbage mixed with diced ham and roasted —aux pruneaux (with prunes) – stuffed with stoned half-cooked prunes mixed with marjoram and roasted —à la russe (Russian style) – roasted unseasoned and basted with sour cream; carved and served on buckwheat sauce mixed with the cooked diced liver and diced hard-boiled eggs. Anne Willan writes that cooks in Alsace generally serve sucking pig hot, those in the adjoining Lorraine tend to braise it and serve it chilled in a clear jelly flavoured with white wine. French cuisine also includes a recipe for sucking-pig's trotters (pieds de cochon de lait à la tchèque – Czech style) in which the trotters are cooked in beer with caraway seeds. Elizabeth David records as "one of the best dishes of its type I have yet tasted" a galantine from Lorraine, consisting of a whole sucking-pig chopped up with white wine, vegetables, spices and herbs. She mentions also "the famous porcelet en gelée, an elegant brawn of sucking pig which makes a fine hors d'œuvre ... in which pieces of pork lie embedded in a crystal clear jelly".Northern Italian barbecue In Italy there are several terms for a sucking-pig: maialino, porcetto, porcellino di latte, or lattonzolo. Porchetta is a sucking-pig stuffed, flavoured with garlic and rosemary, spit-roasted whole and served in slices. The Sardinian porceddu is flavoured with myrtle and spit-roasted whole. Mantecato al maialino is a creamy Carnaroli risotto with sucking-pig and Parmesan. Roast sucking-pig is known in German, Austrian and German-Swiss cuisines as gebratenes Spanferkel. It is often served at festive occasions such as the Oktoberfest. Rheinisches Spanferkel (Rhine sucking-pig) is roast, basted with beer, and served with a stuffing of butter, veal, bacon, liver, bread, onions, eggs, and herbs, flavoured with nutmeg and Madeira. Hungarian cuisine includes not only roast sucking-pig (malac sülve) but sucking-pig soup (malacaprólék-leves) and sucking-pig jelly (malackocsonya). Until the mid-20th century prosię adziewane (roast stuffed sucking-pig) was a traditional Polish Easter dish, which might be stuffed with liver (farsz podróbkowy), buckwheat (farsz z kaszy gryczanej) or raisin and almond (farsz z rodzynków i migdalów). Roast sucking-pig is known as Пeчeно прасe (pecheno prase) in Bulgaria, and purcel mic la gratăr in Romania. The Greek version is γουρουνόπουλο γάλακτος (ghurounopulou ghalaktos). In Sweden sucking-pig is called spädgris; it is usually cooked in the oven, or sometimes roasted directly over a fire. It is often stuffed with various fruits such as apples and plums, together with butter and breadcrumbs. Russian recipes for sucking-pig include braising Estonian-style in a mixture of sherry and broth, roasting Russian-style, stuffed with giblets and buckwheat, and stuffed with apple and served with a buckwheat and horseradish sauce.

[edit] Notes[edit]

^ As an example of a law governing the punishment for theft, Title 2, article 1, is, in Latin, Si quis porcellum lactantem furaverit, et ei fuerit adprobatum (malb. chrane calcium hoc est) CXX dinarios qui faciunt solidos III culpabilis iudicetur. "If someone has stolen a suckling pig and this is proven against him, the guilty party will be sentenced to 120 denarii which adds up to three solidi (Latin coins)." The words chrane calcium are written in Frankish; calcium (or galza in other manuscripts) is the gloss for "suckling pig"; porcellum lactantem.

^ John Ayto in his Diner's Dictionary (2012) argues that the use of "suckling" to mean sucking milk from the teat rather than giving it goes back to the seventeenth century, though he provides no evidence for this and sticks to the traditional English "sucking pig" in his book.

^ The Larousse English-Spanish, Spanish-English dictionary gives two definitions of lechon: "!. [animal] sucking pig. 2. fig [persona] pig, slob".

^ Other dishes have also been described as a national dish of Puerto Rico, such as: asopao and arroz con gandules.

References[edit]

^ a b "sucking-pig". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)

^ "Suckling pig", Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 9 August 2025

^ Montagné, p. 757

^ "Sucking pig". A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Oxford University Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-19-175239-1.

^ a b Riley, p. 518

^ a b Beeton, p. 397

^ Escoffier, p. 459

^ Dalby, p. 59

^ Davidson, p. 623

^ Renfrew, p. 18

^ Apicius, pp, 70–71

^ Gilissen and Gorlé, p. 166

The appeal of a whole roast suckling pig lies in its visual drama and the way it draws guests together. The tiny, tender meat stays juicy because the piglet’s natural fat melts into the skin, creating that coveted crackling that shatters under the knife. In many European traditions the bird‑or‑fish alternative is replaced by a pig, symbolising abundance and prosperity for the year ahead. Even if it isn’t on every British menu today, the dish still pops up at Christmas lunch in country houses and high‑end pubs, where chefs use it to showcase classic roasting techniques while offering diners a taste of historic celebration.

When sourcing a suckling pig, look for one that weighs between 5 and 10 kg; this size roasts evenly without drying out. Choose a pig that’s still pinkish‑white inside, indicating it’s still on milk‑only diet. Ask the butcher to clean the cavity and keep the skin intact—any tears will compromise the crackling. For the oven, a low‑and‑slow start (around 150 °C) followed by a high‑heat blast (220 °C) for the final 20 minutes gives perfect texture. Basting with a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and herbs such as rosemary adds flavour without masking the delicate pork taste. Let the bird rest ten minutes before carving to retain juices.