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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet cake made with pork, raisins, currants, molasses, sugar, spices, and flour, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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.

Prepare the pork

  1. Soak the fat salt pork in boiling water until tender.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, sorghum molasses, raisins, currants, baking soda, spices, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Add the cooked pork (chopped) and brandy to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very stiff.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sorghum + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Sorghum + raisintop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sorghum + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat salt pork
Provides fat and savory body, keeping the cake moist and rich after soaking.
Sorghum molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture that helps the cake brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the dense batter together while baking.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is very stiff. Flour is added in stages so the batter can be judged by feel. Too little flour leaves the cake slack and sunken, while adding it all at once can make the texture uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sugar, sorghum, molasses, raisin, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, sorghum, molasses, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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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