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Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with flour, sugar, spices, and dried fruit, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and baking soda.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the flour, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and dried fruit to the mixture. Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Bake in a greased pan at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides savory meat texture and richness in the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sugar mixture to help the cake rise and brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning and a tender crumb.
Dried fruit
Adds chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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