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Pork Cake

A savory cake made from minced roast pork, mashed potatoes, onion, sage, eggs, and milk, then fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat, fat, and lean from the cold roast pork and mince it very finely.

  2. Boil and mash the potatoes, then mix them with the minced pork, salt, pepper, chopped onion, and powdered sage.

  3. Add 2 or 3 eggs and enough milk to make a very thick batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the mixture like an omelet or bake it in a buttered dish.

  2. Serve with pickled onions or gherkins.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pork
Provides the main meaty body of the cake.
Potatoes
Add starch and softness, helping the mixture hold together and stay moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, giving the cake its structure.
Milk
Loosens the mixture into a thick batter and adds moisture.
Onion
Adds savory flavor and aroma to the pork and potato mixture.

The step that matters

Making the thick batter. The batter must be thick enough to hold its shape when fried or baked. Too much milk makes the cake loose and likely to break apart, while the eggs need to set evenly through the mixture as it cooks.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, potato, pepper, onion, egg, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, pepper, onion, 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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