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Dessert

Pork Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with corned pork, raisins, flour, molasses, sugar, eggs, milk or wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Fruit 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the chopped pork and raisins.

  3. Add the flour, molasses, sugar, eggs, milk or wine, and baking soda. Stir until well combined.

  4. Spice the mixture with cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let it cool before serving.

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.

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

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned pork fat
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture pockets throughout the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lift and lighten the cake.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. Dense, fruit-heavy batters can look set on top while the center is still wet. Checking that a toothpick in the center comes out clean confirms the crumb has fully set, which prevents a gummy middle.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, raisin, flour, molasses, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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