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Pork Cake

A savory cake made from minced pork, mashed potatoes, onions, sage, eggs, and milk, then fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat, fat, and lean from the cold roast pork and mince it finely.

  2. Mix the minced pork with the mashed potatoes, salt, pepper, chopped onion, and powdered sage.

Make and cook

  1. Add the eggs and enough milk to create a very thick batter.

  2. Fry the mixture like an omelet or bake it in a buttered dish.

Serve

  1. Serve with pickled onions or gherkins.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the minced pork tender rather than dry.
Milk
Loosens the mixture into a thick batter that cooks up soft and moist.
Minced pork
Forms the main substance of the cake and gives it its meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and milk. The batter must be very thick so the cake holds its shape when fried or baked. Too much milk makes it loose and likely to fall apart, while the eggs set as they heat and hold the pieces together.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, potato, pepper, onion, egg, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, pepper, onion, egg, milk. 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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