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Pork Cakes

A preserved pork cake made with lean and fat pork, spices, onions, and bread crumbs, then canned with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Combine lean pork and fat pork in a large bowl.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, red pepper, Chile pepper, allspice, sage, and thyme; knead well.

Fry and make gravy

  1. Form the mixture into cakes and fry in deep fat until nicely browned.

  2. Pour off excess grease, add water, and make gravy.

Can and process

  1. Pack cakes in cans, filling with hot gravy to within ½ inch of the top.

  2. Cap the cans and exhaust for 5 minutes.

  3. Process No. 2 cans for 45 minutes at 250°F (120°C) or 15 pounds of steam pressure.

  4. Process No. 3 cans for 55 minutes at 250°F (120°C) or 15 pounds of steam pressure.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the main meat body and firm bite in the cakes.
Fat pork
Adds fat for moisture and rich flavor during frying and canning.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the cake mixture so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help hold the cakes in shape.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook into the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes until nicely browned. Browning through frying builds flavor from the Maillard reaction and sets the surface, so the cakes hold together before canning. Pale cakes taste flat and may crumble in the gravy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, allspice, sage, thyme, onion, garlic):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, allspice, sage, thyme, onion, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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