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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet cake made with pork, sugar, molasses, spices, brandy, raisins, currants, citron, and flour, baked like a fruit cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped pork and let it stand until cold.

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, molasses, spices, brandy, and baking soda.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, citron, and sifted flour to the mixture.

  3. Combine everything well and bake as you would a fruit cake.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides savory meat and fat that give the cake a moist, rich body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sifted flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the cake together.
Raisins
Add chewy texture, sweetness, and moisture to the cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, clove, allspice, brandy. 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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