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Baking

Pork Cake

A baked pork cake made with pork, molasses, butter, eggs, sugar, flour, raisins, dates, citron, spices, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

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 stand for a few minutes.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, butter, and eggs.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sugar, flour, raisins, dates, citron, cloves, baking soda, lemon juice and rind, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the mixture. Stir until well combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with mild acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Pork
Adds moisture and body to the batter as it cooks.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, molasses, butter, egg, sugar, 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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