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Rum Fingers

Rum Fingers are fried dough fingers flavored with rum, lemon peel, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rum Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Whisk the eggs with the castor sugar until thoroughly creamed.

  2. Gradually add the rum and grated lemon peel, blending thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the melted butter and fine flour until the mixture is creamy.

  4. Set the mixture aside for 10 to 12 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape the cream into fingers and fry them in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Drain the fingers thoroughly before they cool.

  3. Serve cold, dusted with sifted sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rum + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Whisked with sugar to trap air, giving the mixture body and structure.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps the eggs hold air when creamed.
Fine flour
Adds structure, setting the mixture so it can be shaped and fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the fingers when fried.
Rum
Adds a distinctive aroma and flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying until lightly browned, then draining. Fry at a steady, moderately hot fat so the surface browns before the inside dries out. Fingers fried too cool absorb extra butter, so draining thoroughly removes surface fat and keeps them from turning greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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