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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with raisins, currants, molasses, sugar, spices, and flour, baked into a loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the pork

  1. Boil the fat pork until soft, then chop it very fine.

  2. Add the boiling water and mix thoroughly on the stove.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the raisins, currants, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, citron, baking soda, and flour, then mix well.

Store

  1. Store in a jar; it will keep for months.

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

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

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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, carrying fat through the dense batter.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Chopping the pork very fine. Fat pork broken into very small pieces distributes evenly through the batter, so the fat melts and moistens the cake consistently instead of leaving greasy pockets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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