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Dessert

Pork Cake

A sweet loaf made with sugar, molasses, pork fat, spices, raisins, nuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Pork Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and sorghum molasses together.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg and re-cream the mixture.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the ground salt pork and let it stand until lukewarm.

  4. Sift the flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg or mace, baking soda, and baking powder together three times.

  5. Add the pork and water mixture to the molasses and sugar mixture, alternating with the sifted dry ingredients.

  6. Beat the mixture hard for one minute, then fold in the floured raisins and nuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased and floured loaf pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for nearly an hour.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sorghum + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sorghum + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sorghum + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Sorghum molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness and a dark color to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the cake rise and lighten.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to give the cake lift.
Ground salt pork
Adds fat and moisture that keep the crumb tender.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture hard for one minute. Alternating wet and dry ingredients and then beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives the cake its structure. Beating too long makes the cake tough, while folding in the raisins and nuts gently keeps the batter light.

Swap the clove

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

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

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