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Dessert

Babas with Kirsch Syrup

A yeast cake made with butter, currants, sultanas, and lemon rind, topped with a kirsch-flavored syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Babas with Kirsch Syrup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center.

  2. Mix the yeast with a little tepid water and add it to the well.

  3. Let it stand for about 30 minutes.

  4. Add the creamed butter, currants, sultanas, sugar, lemon rind, salt, and eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture until smooth, cover with a cloth, and let it rise until doubled in size.

Bake and soak

  1. Prepare buttered timbale molds and fill them halfway with the mixture.

  2. Let them rise until nearly full, then bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  3. Meanwhile, boil the sugar and water until syrup forms, then flavor with kirschwasser.

  4. Pour the syrup over the babas or dip them in it before serving.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Fine flour
Forms the structure that holds the risen crumb together.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and help the batter rise and set when baked.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and gives the babas their moist, sweet finish.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas; under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the molds should only be filled halfway so the cakes have room to expand without spilling over.

Swap the currant

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

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

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