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Baba a rOrientale

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 703 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Baba a rOrientale

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Prepare a rich baba or sararin paste and incorporate stoned raisins and diced glace fruit.

  2. Fill a well-buttered tinted mold three-quarters full and let it prove.

  3. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Prepare a syrup flavored with rum and reduced orange juice, then soak the baked baba with it.

  5. Let it cool and drain well.

  6. Coat the outside with dissolved apricot marmalade, then cover with a thin layer of fondant or royal icing.

  7. Decorate with red-currant jelly, angelica, glace cherries, and other crystallized fruit.

  8. Fill the center with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with orange, tinted with carmine or orange cream ice.

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. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + angelicatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Apricot + angelicatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 (raisin, rum, orange, apricot, angelica, cream, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, rum, orange, apricot, angelica, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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