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Dessert

Pork Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Cook and strain the pork

  1. Combine chopped pork and boiling water in a pot and stew together.

  2. Strain, discarding bits of pork.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the strained liquid with eggs, molasses, sugar, baking soda, currants, raisins, and spices.

  2. Gradually add flour, mixing until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick 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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Its stewing liquid supplies the moisture and savory richness of the batter.
Eggs
They bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake structure.
Molasses
It adds sweetness, moisture, dark colour and a deep flavour.
Baking soda
It reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Its proteins form gluten and starch sets, giving the cake its body.
Currants and raisins
They add sweetness, chewiness and pockets of fruit flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. A dense, fruit-filled cake can look set on top while the centre is still wet. Testing the middle, not just the surface, ensures the starches and proteins have fully set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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