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Dessert

Rum Cakes

A yeast‑leavened cake flavored with rum, orange flower water, and lemon, topped with a rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rum Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the yeast dough

  1. In a bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm milk.

  2. Sift flour onto a board.

  3. Take one third of the sifted flour and make a hollow in the center.

  4. Mix the dissolved yeast into the hollow for one minute.

  5. Cover the mixture and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  6. In another hollow of the remaining flour, add sugar, eggs, and orange-flower water.

  7. Knead the mixture, gradually incorporating the butter and prepared yeast-dough.

  8. Mix for five minutes.

  9. Let it rise again until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter six round rum-cake molds.

  2. Fill the molds three-quarters full with dough.

  3. Let the molds rise until full.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for twenty minutes.

  5. Once browned, unmold the cakes and place them on a wire rack.

Make the rum syrup and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and sliced lemon.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in rum.

  4. Pour over the cakes 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cakes their structure.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and moisture to the dough.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and feeds the yeast to start fermentation.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled before baking. Yeast gas expansion creates the light, open crumb. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

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

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