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Baking

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake with currants, raisins, citron, spices, and brown sugar baked at 300°F.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pork Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped pork and let it sit.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the brown sugar, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and dissolved baking soda.

  3. Add the pork mixture and stir well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the mixture is quite stiff.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for two 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat pork
Adds richness and moisture to the cake as it renders during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cake structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sugars and spices to help the cake rise and darken slightly.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to a deep, molasses-like colour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together once baked.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is quite stiff. Adding flour slowly lets you judge the batter's stiffness, since too much flour makes the cake dry and dense while too little leaves it too loose to hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

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

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