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Dessert

Baba or Rum Cakes

A yeast cake soaked in rum syrup and topped with marshmallow icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baba or Rum Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge and dough

  1. Add 2 cups flour, 2 cups butter, 2 teaspoonful salt, 1 cake compressed yeast and 4 cups water.

  2. Mix yeast into water thoroughly. Stir in flour to form dough. Knead into a ball. Cut at right angles across the top half-way through the ball and set in a saucepan of lukewarm water.

  3. Beat the remaining flour, salt, butter, and two eggs until smooth.

  4. Add the other two eggs, one at a time, and beat.

  5. Add the light ball of sponge and beat until smooth.

Bake and soak

  1. Turn into well-buttered tin molds. When nearly doubled in bulk, bake for twenty minutes.

  2. Boil one cup sugar and half cup water until a thick syrup. Add half cup rum. Pour the hot syrup over the hot cakes. These are best warm but may be served cold.

Make the icing and finish

  1. Make a boiled icing: stir in six broken marshmallows, a tablespoonful ground coconut, one cup chopped walnuts, and a teaspoon vanilla. Spread on crackers. Brown in oven. Serve hot or cold.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

640Calories
20 gProtein
9 gFat
109 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 9 ingredients. The other 4 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Rum1/2 oz (15ml)32
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Waternot in our table0
Syrupnot in our table0
Meatnot in our table0
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough and gives the cakes their structure as it sets.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the cakes an open crumb.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and help bind the batter.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, boiled into syrup, moistens the cakes.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the soaking syrup.

The step that matters

Baking when nearly doubled in bulk. Baking too early leaves the dough dense because the yeast has not built enough gas. Waiting too long lets the gas structure weaken, so the cakes may collapse or turn coarse.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, syrup, rum, meat, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, syrup, rum, meat, egg. 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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