Skip to main content
Dessert

Baba a LA Polonaise

A sweet yeast cake with currants, sultanas, orange peel, and citron, baked in a greased dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baba a LA Polonaise

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm milk.

Make the batter

  1. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the whole eggs and egg yolks to the butter mixture, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, currants, sultanas, orange peel, and citron, mixing until combined.

Rise, bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  3. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

  4. Allow to 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the enriched batter together as it bakes.
Fresh german yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a tender crumb and a rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Let it rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment fully. Rising too little leaves a dense cake, while the dough can over-proof and collapse if left too long.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, currant, sugar, milk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, currant, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes