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Pork Cake
1 lb. finely chopped fat salt pork 1 pt. (2 cups) strong hot coffee 1 tablespoon baking soda dissolved in little hot water 1 cup light molasses 2 cups dark brown sugar 1 teaspoon each: cinnamon, allspice or nutmeg, ginger and mace 1 lb. chopped seeded raisins 1 lb. currants 1/2 lb. chopped nuts 1/4 lb. shredded or sliced candied peels about 9 cups pastry flour Pour boiling coffee over the chopped pork, let stand to melt. Add the soda, then molasses, sugar and spices and beat together. Stir in flour alternately with the fruit, and again beat well. Bake 2 1/2 hours in slow oven (300 degrees). Makes 2 large loaves of cake. Put away when cool, well wrapped, in tin box or crock.
A no-butter, no-egg fruitcake in which finely chopped fat salt pork supplies all the shortening. It works, but the pork has to be cut small enough to melt in the hot liquid, and the batter is enormous.
- The hinge: chop the pork very fineBoiling coffee will soften and partly melt small fragments of fat pork, but not cubes. Trim off any lean streaks and rind, chill the fat firm, then chop to a coarse mince or pulse briefly in a food processor. Unmelted pieces leave greasy pockets in the finished loaf.
- Salt pork todayUse plain salt pork, not smoked bacon, and rinse and pat it dry so the cake does not taste of smoke or read as salty. Modern salt pork may differ in cure and moisture from the barrel pork of the period.
- Slow ovenThe recipe gives the number, and it is right: 300F for the full 2 1/2 hours. Test with a skewer in the centre; a dense, fruit-heavy loaf can need another 20-30 minutes, and the top should spring back rather than dip.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is soft, low-protein flour, not the same as all-purpose. If you cannot get it, substitute all-purpose but reduce the total by roughly 1 cup and add flour only until the batter is thick enough to hold the fruit in suspension. Nine cups is a guide, not a fixed figure.
- Light molassesThis means mild or first-run molasses, closer to what is sold as unsulphured table molasses. Blackstrap is far more bitter and will dominate the spices.
- Soda, not baking powderThe single tablespoon of soda is doing a lot of work against the acid molasses and coffee. Dissolve it fully in a tablespoon or two of hot water before it goes in, or you will get soapy yellow streaks.
- Pans and scaleThis is close to nine pounds of batter. Two 9x5-inch loaf pans is the minimum; grease and line them with parchment, and expect to bake in the lower third of the oven. Halving the recipe is entirely reasonable.
- KeepingWrapped and stored cool as directed, it keeps for weeks. Check the wrapping periodically and keep it cool and away from heat; pork fat will eventually turn rancid.
Pork cake belongs to a family of thrift fruitcakes made in farm kitchens where salt pork was kept year-round and butter was seasonal, scarce, or worth selling. Salt pork was a common household fat in nineteenth-century North America, and it turns up in mincemeat, pies and cakes as well as in the frying pan; heavy spicing, molasses and two pounds of dried fruit cover any trace of the meat. This is a fruitcake to be baked well ahead, wrapped, and put away in a tin or crock, and the instruction to do exactly that is the last line of the recipe.