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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet pork cake made with salt pork, sugar, molasses, dried fruit, spices, baking soda, and flour, baked in a greased pan.

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

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 pork

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, molasses, raisins, currants, and citron.

  2. Add cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and baking soda to the mixture.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness that moistens the cake as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda with the molasses. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas for lift. Molasses supplies that acidity, so the soda should be mixed in thoroughly so it spreads evenly through the batter and the cake rises uniformly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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