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Dessert

Pork Fruit Cake

A fruit cake made with salt pork, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, and spices, baked at 350°F for 2 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped salt pork and boiling water. Let it sit until cool.

  2. Add sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, and baking powder to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter reaches the consistency of other fruit cakes. Mix in spices to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness that gives the cake its moist, dense body.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and open up as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter reaches the consistency of other fruit cakes. Too little flour leaves a loose batter that may not set, while too much makes the cake dense and dry. Adding it gradually lets you stop at the right thickness.

Swap the currant

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

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

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