In the capacious belly of the ox were a dozen soft little
sucking-pigs, which, sewn up there, served to give it tenderness and flavour.
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat,
sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.
On the other hand, Apicius' "
Sucking-pig a la Vitellius" (the emperor Vitellius was called "the Glutton") is "roast in the oven" and alludes to "crackling." Whether it was Apicius's fewer recipes for roast pig than for boiled pig, or whether it was Swift's suggestion that the cannibalized infant remains "very good boiled, on the fourth day," or even whether it was Montaigne's remark on cannibals that "They have great abundance of fish and flesh that have no resemblance at all with ours, and eat them without any sauces or skill of Cookery, but plain boiled or broiled," but Lamb insisted that his pig "must be roasted.