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Dessert

Baba or Rum Cakes

A yeast-based cake flavored with rum, baked and soaked in a rum syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Baba or Rum Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Mix the yeast with the water thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the flour to make a dough.

  3. Knead the dough into a ball.

  4. Cut a cross on the top of the dough.

  5. Place the dough in a saucepan of lukewarm water.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the remaining flour, salt, and butter with 2 eggs until smooth.

  2. Add the other 2 eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Incorporate the light ball of sponge into the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture until smooth.

Bake and soak

  1. Turn the mixture into well-buttered molds.

  2. When the dough has nearly doubled in size, bake for 20 minutes.

  3. Boil the sugar and water until thick syrup forms.

  4. Add the rum to the hot syrup.

  5. Pour the syrup over the hot cakes.

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. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the dough and gives the cakes their structure as it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and lift to the batter as they set when baked.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and gives the cakes their light, airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and greases the molds.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that soaks them.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the syrup that soaks into the cakes.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup over the hot cakes. Hot cakes are porous and absorb the syrup evenly, while cooled cakes stay dry on the inside. The syrup should be thick but hot so it soaks in rather than pooling on top.

“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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