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Dessert

Baba

A sweet cake made with fine sojee, toddy, eggs, butter, saffron, wine, currants, raisins, sugar, cream, flour, yeast, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Saffron and raisin work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baba

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix 1 pound of fine sojee with sufficient toddy to form a dough.

  2. Cover the dough with a cloth and let it rest for 2 hours.

  3. Heat 8 eggs with ½ pound of fresh butter and 1 teaspoon of salt for 15 minutes.

  4. Combine this mixture with the dough.

Add flavourings and cream

  1. Infuse 8 grains of saffron in a little water.

  2. Add this water to the dough along with 2 glasses of Madeira or sweet wine, currants, raisins, and a little sugar.

  3. Add ½ pint of well‑frothed cream to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter the mold before pouring in the batter.

  2. Prepare a tin that is twice the size of the dough and pour the dough into it.

  3. Use a mold with a chimney in the middle for baking.

  4. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  5. Bake for 1 hour, checking occasionally and covering with paper to preserve color.

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. Saffron + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sojee
Forms the dough body that gives the cake its base structure.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the cake as it bakes.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and flavour.
Madeira or sweet wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the dough.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Covering the cake with paper while baking. Sugar and wine in the batter brown quickly, so the top can darken or burn before the centre is set. Checking and covering with paper protects the colour while the inside finishes cooking.

Swap the saffron

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, wine, currant, raisin, sugar, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, wine, currant, raisin, sugar, cream. 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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