No. 3002

Baba with Marsala

Baba au Marsala

Fill a buttered baba mold to half its height with a baba paste (No. 129) without any raisins; set it to rise in a rather mild temperature until the mold is nearly full, then bake it in a moderate oven. As soon as done cut it off even with the top of the mold. Unmold, and pour over a rum syrup, flavored with vanilla and orange peel; drain it well and glaze it with lemon icing (No. 102). Dress it on a very hot dish and fill up the inside of the hollow space with fruits prepared as follows, serving the surplus of them in a sauce-boat:

Preparation of Fruits.—Put in a saucepan a quarter of a pound of well-cleaned sultana raisins (No. 157), two ounces of candied orange peel, two ounces of candied green almonds and two ounces of candied pineapple, the whole to be cut in small three-sixteenths inch squares; two gills of Marsala wine, three gills of syrup at thirty-two degrees, the peel of half a lemon and the peel of half an orange; put the saucepan on the fire and take it off at the first boil.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a pastry kitchen with numbered base preparations on hand, so the work here is mostly translation: a rich yeast dough, a soaking syrup, an icing, and a compote of candied fruit in Marsala.

The hinge: soak while hotThe hinge: soak warm -- A baba takes up syrup best when the cake is still warm and the syrup hot; if both are cold the syrup tends to sit on the surface rather than soak in, and the draining step Ranhofer calls for has little left to do.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of Marsala is one cup; three gills of syrup is one and a half cups.
Syrup at thirty-two degreesThat is 32 degrees Baume, a heavy sugar syrup of roughly 60 percent sugar — about three parts granulated sugar to two parts water by weight, dissolved over heat. Ordinary one-to-one simple syrup will be noticeably thinner and less sweet.
Moderate ovenRoughly 350F. A baba's high butter and egg content colors fast, so tent the top if it darkens before the center sets.
Baba pasteRanhofer's No. 129 is an enriched yeast dough in the brioche family — flour, yeast, eggs, butter, a little sugar and salt — normally studded with raisins, which are omitted here because the fruit garnish carries them. "Rather mild temperature" for proofing means around 75-80F, not a hot proof box.
The hollow spaceRanhofer does not say how the cavity is made. A ring or savarin mold gives a center to fill; in a plain baba mold you will need to hollow the cake after cutting it level.
Candied green almondsUnripe almonds candied whole in their soft hull, hard to find now outside specialist suppliers. Candied angelica or candied citron fills the same role -- a firm, faintly bitter green-tinged dice among the sweeter fruits.
MarsalaUse a dry (secco) Marsala. The syrup already carries the sweetness, and a sweet Marsala plus 32-degree syrup plus lemon icing pushes the dish past the point where the fruit reads as fruit.
First boil onlyBringing the fruit mixture just to a boil and pulling it off keeps the dice plump and the wine's aroma intact. Simmering it reduces the syrup, candies the fruit hard, and cooks off the Marsala.
Lemon icingNo. 102 is a lemon icing; the usual form is a glace of confectioners' sugar slackened with lemon juice and warmed to spreading consistency. Apply it after the cake has drained or it will slide.
YieldDepends entirely on the mold; Ranhofer gives no size. Serve hot, on a very hot dish as directed, with the surplus fruit and its syrup passed separately.

A Little History

Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book's structure — every preparation cross-referenced to a numbered base recipe — reflects a brigade kitchen where baba paste, sugar syrups at fixed Baume densities and lemon icing were standing stock rather than things made from scratch for one dessert. The baba itself is generally traced to Lorraine in the eighteenth century and popularly credited to the exiled Polish king Stanislaw Leszczynski, said to have moistened a dry kugelhopf with sweet wine or spirit; the story is traditional rather than documented, though the rum-soaked version was well established in Paris pastry by the nineteenth century. What is distinctly of its moment here is the Marsala. Sicilian fortified wine, built up for the British market from the late eighteenth century, was cheap and abundant in American ports by Ranhofer's day, and here it appears as an addition in the fruit, alongside the rum doing its usual work in the soaking syrup.