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Dessert

Rum Babas

Rum Babas are sweet cakes made with flour, butter, yeast, eggs, milk, salt, sugar, sultanas, baked and soaked in rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rum Babas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In the evening, mix flour, butter, yeast, eggs, milk, salt, sugar, and sultanas until well combined.

  2. Beat the mixture well and fill the baba moulds halfway with the paste.

  3. Place the moulds in a warm area to rise until they reach the top.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Remove from moulds and let cool.

Make the syrup and soak

  1. Prepare syrup by dissolving 2 pounds of sugar in 1 pint of water and boiling for 1 minute.

  2. Remove from heat, skim off the scum, and boil again until it reaches a small thread stage.

  3. Add juice of 2 lemons and ⅓ cup of rum to the syrup.

  4. Dip the babas in the hot syrup three at a time, being careful not to soak them too much.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 structure of the soft, airy crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Dip the babas in the hot syrup three at a time, being careful not to soak them too much.. Baked dough is porous and soaks up syrup quickly. Too much soaking makes the cake waterlogged and heavy, while too little leaves it dry, so timing and restraint matter.

“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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