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Baba or Rum Cakes

A yeast‑leavened cake soaked in 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 the flour to make a dough.

  3. Knead the dough into a ball.

  4. Cut a cross on top of the dough.

  5. Place the dough in a saucepan of lukewarm water.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Incorporate the light ball of sponge into the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture until smooth.

Bake and soak

  1. Turn the mixture into well-buttered molds.

  2. Let the dough rise until nearly doubled in bulk.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

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

  5. Add ½ cup of rum to the syrup.

  6. Pour the rum syrup over the hot cakes.

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
Provides the structure that holds the risen cakes together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set into a light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives the cakes their airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it thicken into a soaking liquid.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the syrup that soaks into the cakes.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until nearly doubled in bulk. Yeast gas expands the dough; under-proofing leaves cakes dense, while over-proofing can collapse the structure and make them coarse.

“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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