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Dessert

Baba or Rum Cakes

A yeast cake flavored with rum, baked and topped with a rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Mix the yeast with the water thoroughly.

  2. Stir in flour to make a dough and knead into a ball.

  3. Cut a cross on top of the dough and set it in a saucepan of lukewarm water.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the remaining flour, salt, and butter with 2 eggs until smooth.

  2. Add the other 2 eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Incorporate the light ball of sponge and beat until smooth.

Bake and soak

  1. Turn the mixture into well-buttered molds.

  2. When nearly doubled in bulk, bake for 20 minutes.

  3. Boil 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of water until it forms a thick syrup.

  4. Add ½ cup of rum to the hot syrup and pour it over the hot cakes.

  5. Serve warm or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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).

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 dough structure that holds the cakes together as they rise.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set firmly when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Yeast
Leavens the dough so the cakes rise and become light and airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives the cakes their sweetness and moisture.
Rum
Flavours the syrup and adds aroma to the soaked cakes.

The step that matters

When nearly doubled in bulk, bake for 20 minutes.. Baking before the batter has risen fully leaves dense cakes, while over-proofing lets the yeast structure collapse. Timing the bake to near doubling gives a light, open crumb.

“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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