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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet cake made with salt pork, raisins, molasses, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pork

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped salt pork and let the mixture sit.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, molasses, and baking soda until combined.

  2. Add the raisins, chopped citron, and spices to the mixture.

  3. Sift baking powder with flour.

  4. Gradually add the sifted mixture to the previous mixture and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its gluten and starch set during baking.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly acidic sweetness to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise and brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cake additional lift and a lighter crumb.
Salt pork
Contributes fat that keeps the cake moist and tender as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sifted mixture. Adding the dry flour and leavening in portions keeps the batter smooth and evenly mixed, so the leavening spreads through the batter and the cake rises evenly instead of forming lumps or dense pockets.

“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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