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Baba with Rum Syrup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baba with Rum Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift ½ cup of flour into a warm bowl, add salt, and make a well in the center.

  2. Mix yeast with a little warm milk, add to the flour, and knead into a smooth dough.

  3. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  4. Sift the remaining flour into a large bowl, make a well, and add salt, sugar, softened butter, and remaining milk.

  5. Beat the mixture by hand for 15 minutes and cover with a cloth.

  6. Once the dough has risen, combine both mixtures, add currants, and knead lightly for 15 minutes.

  7. Prepare 1 large or 8 small well-buttered molds, sprinkle with a few currants, and fill half with dough.

  8. Let rise near a warm place until doubled.

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

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

  2. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, 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

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, milk, apricot, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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