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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, molasses, sour milk, pork, raisins, eggs, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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

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. In a large bowl, combine sugar, molasses, sour milk, chopped pork, raisins, eggs, grated nutmeg, baking soda, and cinnamon.

  2. Stir in flour until the mixture resembles a fruit cake batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

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

  3. This cake will keep for six months.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cake rises and stays tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Fat pork
Adds richness and fat that keeps the crumb moist and tender.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour gently until just combined. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form; overmixing makes the cake tough and dense, while stopping when the batter just comes together keeps it tender.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, milk, pork, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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