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Dessert

Pork Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add brown sugar, molasses, baking soda, cinnamon, ground cloves, allspice, grated nutmeg, and chopped raisins to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into ordinary bread pans.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for one 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Adds richness and fat, so the cake stays moist and tender as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color and flavor of the cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, clove, allspice, nutmeg. 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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