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Dessert

Pork Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with corned pork, raisins, flour, molasses, sugar, eggs, milk or wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Fruit 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. Chop the corned pork very fine.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the chopped pork with raisins, flour, molasses, sugar, eggs, milk or wine, and saleratus.

  2. Add cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon to the mixture. Stir until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Let it cool before serving.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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.
Saleratus
Leavens the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter in texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a dark color to the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fruit and pork together.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Fruit cakes with molasses and chopped meat are dense and can stay gummy in the center if underbaked. Baking until fully set, with a toothpick or similar test, ensures the eggs and flour have cooked through.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, raisin, flour, molasses, sugar, egg, milk. 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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