Skip to main content
Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet and spiced pork cake with raisins, currants, citron, molasses, and spices baked into a flour batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

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 salt pork and stir until melted.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander to remove bits of fiber.

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

  4. Reserve ½ cup of flour to coat the fruit.

  5. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water. Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture.

  6. Incorporate the remaining flour and the fruit.

Bake and test

  1. Pour the batter into buttered pans lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Test with a clean broom straw to check for doneness.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness, keeping the cake moist as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and acids to lift the batter as it bakes.
New orleans molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and deep sweetness to the cake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay tender.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly through the batter. Unevenly distributed soda can leave bitter pockets and uneven rising.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes