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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet cake made with pork, sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pork Cake

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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Simmer the fat pork in 3 pints of water on the stove until dissolved.

  2. Add the sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, citron, grated nutmegs, and baking soda.

  3. Stiffen the mixture with flour until it reaches a thick consistency.

Bake

  1. Bake in three separate cake pans.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 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 pork
Melts into the liquid to add richness and moisture to the cake.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep sweetness to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the cake rise and darken.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and provides the structure that holds the cake together.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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