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Dessert

Fruit Cake Without Eggs

A sweet cake made with pork, sugar, molasses, spices, baking soda, dried fruit, and boiled water, baked without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Cake Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour boiling water over minced pork in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, molasses, and spices; mix until stiff.

  3. Stir in baking soda and dried fruit.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking pan and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pork + molassestop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together825 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Clear fat pork
Adds richness and moisture, and gives the cake its tender, rich body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and helps the cake brown while baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown and keep moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets acid and moisture, so it should be mixed in evenly and the batter baked promptly. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of soda that can cause bitter spots and uneven rising.

“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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