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Babas with Kirsch

Yeast-raised small cakes baked in buttered molds and soaked in a rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and rum work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Babas with Kirsch

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a warm bowl, sift the flour and make a hole in the center.

  2. Mix the yeast with a little warm milk and add it to the flour.

  3. Knead into a smooth dough, cover with a cloth, and let it rise in a warm place.

  4. In a large bowl, sift the remaining flour, make a hole, and add salt, sugar, warmed butter, eggs, and remaining milk.

  5. Beat for 15 minutes and cover with a cloth.

  6. When the dough has doubled in size, mix in the bowl's contents, add currants, and knead lightly for 15 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Prepare one large or eight small well-buttered molds, sprinkle with currants, and half fill with dough.

  2. Let rise near the fire until nearly at the top of the mold, then bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C).

Soak and serve

  1. Once done, turn onto a sieve and baste with rum syrup.

  2. To make the syrup, boil sugar and water until reduced, add jam, boil for 10 minutes, strain, return to heat, add rum, and bring to boiling point.

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. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Forms the gluten network that gives the babas their airy, bread-like structure.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough set and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich texture.
Rum syrup
Soaks into the baked dough, adding moisture and aroma.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise to nearly the top of the mold. Under-proofed babas stay dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse or bake unevenly. Yeast activity and gas trapping decide the final lightness, so checking the dough height matters more than the clock.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg, lemon, apricot, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, lemon, apricot, rum. 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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