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Dessert

Pork Cake Without Lard

A sweet pork cake made with raisins, currants, molasses, and flour, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Without Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Stir in the sugar, molasses, eggs, mixed spice, raisins, currants, and citron.

  4. Beat in the cooled pork and water mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly 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.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Fat salt pork
Adds richness and moisture to the cake as it renders into the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift and lighten the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda can react and help it rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until done. Baking slowly lets the heavy, fruit-filled batter cook through to the center before the outside over-browns. Because the cake is dense and moist, it can look finished on top while still being underbaked inside, so test the center before removing it.

Swap the currant

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

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

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