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Dessert

Pork Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 400°F (200°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 stir until melted.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add brown sugar, molasses, spices, and half of the flour, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the dissolved baking soda and the remaining flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered cake pan.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Melts into the batter, adding richness and moisture and fat to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and sugar acids to lift the batter as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness that helps the cake brown.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and keeps the crumb moist and tender.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Incorporating the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas, so it must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed into the molasses batter. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of bitter soda and patchy rising.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, raisin, currant, sugar, molasses, flour, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, raisin, currant, sugar, molasses, flour, clove. 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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