Roast pig is sometimes partly divided before serving. Cut off the head and divide it through the middle; then divide through the backbone. Place it on the platter back to back, with half the head on each end of the dish.

If the pig is very young, it is in better style to serve it whole. Before cooking, truss the forelegs forward and the hind legs backward. Place the pig on the platter with the head at the left. Cut off the head, separating the neck-joint with the point of the knife,  then cut through the flesh on either side. Take off the shoulders by cutting in a circle from under the foreleg round nearly to the backbone and down again. Bend it forward and cut through the joint. Cut off the hams in the same way. Then split the backbone the entire length and divide between each rib. Cut slices from the thickest part of the hams and the shoulders.

The ribs are the choice portion, but those who like it at all consider any part of it a delicacy.

"Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibiles, I will maintain roast pig to be the most delicate. There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called—the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance—with the adhesive oleaginous—oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it—the tender blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot—in the first innocence—the cream and quintessence of the child-pig’s yet pure food—the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna—or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance."