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Baba au Rhum
Ingredients the same as for Savarin, with the addition of one and a half ounces of currants and rum syrup.
Proceed for this sweet exactly as for a Savarin, the only difference is that you must use either a large baba mould, or small ones, if preferred, and the mould or moulds, after being well buttered, must be sprinkled on the bottom and sides with a few well cleaned currants-one and a half ounce is enough. When turned out it must be well basted with hot rum syrup, and served with some of the syrup poured over it. This sweet must be served hot.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: everything hangs on the Savarin recipe printed elsewhere in the book, which is a soft yeast-raised batter of flour, eggs, butter, milk and a little sugar. What follows covers the points where the modern kitchen diverges.
- Read the Savarin recipe firstWithout it you have no quantities, no rising times and no oven. The baba differs only in the mould, the currants stuck to its buttered sides, and the rum syrup. Do not attempt to reconstruct the dough from this page alone.
- Currants, not berries"Currants" here means dried Zante currants — small black raisins — not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. One and a half ounces is about 4 tablespoons. "Well cleaned" reflects a period when dried fruit arrived gritty and stemmed; rinse and dry thoroughly, or simply use packaged fruit as is.
- The mouldA baba mould is a deep, slightly flared cylinder, roughly a pint for the large size; individual dariole tins or a muffin tin work for the small ones. Butter heavily and press the currants onto the base and sides so they stay put when the batter goes in. Fill moulds no more than half full — this is a soft batter and it climbs.
- YeastA recipe of this vintage most likely assumes fresh compressed yeast, though the quantity is given in the Savarin recipe, not on this page. If substituting instant dried yeast use roughly a third of the weight of fresh (about half for active dry), and judge the rising by the dough's appearance rather than the clock; modern kitchens are warmer than a Victorian larder.
- OvenThe page gives no oven at all; check the Savarin recipe. As a modern working figure, yeast-raised babas take a fairly brisk oven, around 400F, for 15-20 minutes for small moulds and 25-35 for a large one. They are done when deep brown and firm, and should be turned out at once.
- The hinge: hot syrup, rested cakeBasting is where babas succeed or fail. The syrup must be genuinely hot and the cake no longer fresh from the oven — a baba left half an hour, or made the day before, drinks syrup steadily instead of collapsing into paste. Baste repeatedly, letting each application soak in, rather than drowning it in one go.
- Rum syrupThe book gives none of its own here. A workable proportion is equal weights of sugar and water boiled to a light syrup, cooled slightly, then flavoured with dark rum to taste — usually a quarter to a third of the syrup's volume. Add the rum off the heat so the alcohol survives.
- Serving and yieldServed hot, as directed, with extra syrup spooned over at the table. Yield depends entirely on the Savarin quantities, which are not given here.
The baba's name and its rum are usually traced, traditionally rather than on documentary evidence, to the exiled Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński and his court in Lorraine in the eighteenth century, where a dry yeast cake was said to have been revived with sweet wine or spirit. The savarin — the same dough baked in a ring and soaked in syrup — is credited to Parisian pâtissiers of the nineteenth century and named for Brillat-Savarin, author of Physiologie du goût. By the time a British "high class cookery" manual was written, both had settled into the standard repertoire of the professional kitchen, which is why the book can dispose of the baba in a single paragraph: any cook trained in that repertoire already knew the savarin batter by heart.