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Dessert

Raised Rum Baba

A yeast-based cake flavored with rum, currants, raisins, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Rum Baba

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.

Make the yeast batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in warm water and let it stand in a warm place for 30 minutes until it floats.

  2. Add 4 ounces of flour and a little more water to make a soft batter.

  3. Let it rise until very light.

Make the dough

  1. In another bowl, mix 1 pound of flour, 6 ounces of butter, and 2 ounces of sugar.

  2. Stir in 1½ pints of warm milk, then add the eggs one at a time and ⅓ cup of rum. Mix well.

  3. Add 1 ounce of currants, 3 ounces of raisins, and ½ ounce of citron.

  4. Let this mixture stand for 1 hour.

  5. Combine the yeast batter with the mixture thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Fill a well-buttered mold half full, allowing room for the dough to rise.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter and dough.
Milk
Moistens the dough and helps develop its soft crumb.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the yeast batter rise until very light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that lifts the batter. If it is underproofed, the cake stays dense; the dough must have room to expand in the mold.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, milk, egg, rum, raisin. 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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