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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with raisins, molasses, brown sugar, flour, and baking soda.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine the chopped pork and raisins in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar, molasses, and baking soda.

  2. Add the cooled pork and raisin mixture to the sugar mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour and spices until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lift the batter and lighten its texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly acidic flavor.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Let the pork and raisins cool before mixing. Boiling water softens the raisins and pork; if they are still very hot when added to the sugar mixture, they can start to melt or thin the batter unevenly, and the baking soda reaction can be disrupted before the batter is set in the oven.

“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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