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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with ground pork, coffee, brown sugar, spices, raisins, currants, citron, nuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Roll the raisins, currants, and citron in 1 cup of flour.

  2. Pour the boiling coffee over the ground pork.

  3. Add the brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon of hot water.

  4. Mix in the flour with the baking powder sifted in.

  5. Finally, fold in the floured fruit and nuts.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C).

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground pork (fat)
Supplies fat that keeps the cake moist and tender as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the coffee and spices to lift and lighten the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a moist, caramel-like depth of flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in hot water before mixing. Baking soda needs moisture and an acid to react and raise the batter. Dissolving it fully in hot water helps it distribute evenly, so the cake rises uniformly rather than leaving dense or bitter spots.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, coffee, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove, flour):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, coffee, sugar, allspice, cinnamon, clove, flour. 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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