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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with molasses, sugar, raisins, and spices, baked in a greased pan.

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Once cool, add molasses, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and baking soda.

  3. Mix in the flour and raisins until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.
Fat salt pork
Adds richness and moisture to the crumb as it renders during cooling and baking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps browning and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Let the pork cool before adding the other ingredients. Boiling water softens and partly renders the pork fat. If the mixture is still very hot when the baking soda and molasses go in, the soda reacts too quickly and the batter can lose lift, so letting it cool first keeps the rise even.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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