The spirit of cookery

The Baba is a cake of Polish origin, and, according to the Countess Eisleff, née Countess Potoka, and related to King Stanislas Leczinsky, the father-in-law of Louis XV., ought strictly to be made with rye-flour and moistened with sweet wine of Hungary. But it has now been assimilated to the great cakes of the cultured nations, and, like them, is made with wheaten flour. It should whenever practicable be made of sufficient size to be served as a large massive dish, and as entremets, and to be able to figure during several days on the buffet for accidental want. * Careme called his informant ‘ M. Eugene,’ omitting his family name of Wolf. He also disapproved of the crumbing of the mould, as it spoiled the colour. Dumas’s recipe is inexact by the omission of 8 oz. of liquid butter and the premature introduction of sugar. Many other copyists have similar errors. In our experiments we followed Carfime and some Austrian modifications with complete success ; also for small Frankfort Kugelhopfe., S.G.]<'. (anonymous German cookery-book), 553. BABA AND RATAN CAKE The baba cake was made known in France by Stanislas Leczinsky. The descendants of this King always ate the baba with a sauce made of sweetened Malaga wine mixed with one-sixteenth part of distilled water of tansy (tanaisie or tanesie). At present the baba is eaten with similar sauces, all containing vinous ingredients, or spirits, or liqueur. In Paris babas of small size, formed in small moulds, just like the small brioches and Kugelhopfe, are sold in the confectioners’ shops. There are large representative and smaller and more simple variations of babas. When a baba has not been consumed fresh, it may be cut in slices, steeped in Madeira wine, covered with a batter, and fried. Such beignets of baba are always agreeable at table. The Batan Cake has as high an antiquity in Germany and France as the brioche in France or the Bath bun in England. It is therefore the duty of the magiric historian to protect it in its rights, which are in its home indefeasible, but in other countries might be lost for want of assertion. This danger exists in France, notwithstanding that the ratan cake has been established in its culinary literature for at least three centuries. A recipe for the imitation passing under the forged name of gâteau Savarin was only published about 1875, and has since been assiduously copied into later culinary productions, mostly verbatim, sometimes, however, with such additions as make it a 2^udding in name, a modification partly influenced by the earlier mode of using the baba. It has even been degraded so far that it has been proposed to be made with baking - powder ; we would respectfully leave the product to be eaten by those who have made the proposal, did we suppose that they ever carried it out themselves. The perpetrator of the plagiarism, which he cleverly godfathered upon an innocent celebrity, saw reason to mask the external appearance of the cake, for he gave an elaborate recipe for a sugar-glace to cover it, ordered it to be pierced with a knife in numerous places, and then to be drenched with a thick orange syrup mixed with curaçoa. Even this treatment is plagiarized from the baba, and thus cake and sauce must be pronounced spurious intruders.