Rum Baba or Baba au Rhum and the Savarin or Savarin au Rhum. France’s Tastiest Rum Accented Pastries.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Baba au Rhum - A Rum Baba
Photograph courtesy of Daniele
www.flickr.com/photos/77081906@N08/8107499369/ 

The players behind the story of Baba au Rum and the Rum Savarin:

King Louis XV of France and his wife, Queen Marie.
Queen Marie was the daughter of Stanislas Leszczynski, ex-king of Poland.

Stanislas Leszczynski Duke of Lorraine and Bar, France.
The father of Queen Marie and formerly the King of Poland and Grand-Duke of Lithuania. He lost his position as elected king twice; then he came to France. 

An unknown Polish countrywoman.
The assistant cook in Duke Stanislas’s castle in the Lorraine, Northern France.

François Vatel.
The chef who created Chantilly cream.

And last, but not least

Jeanne Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
by the naming of a Rum Baba with Chantilly Cream as a Savarin.

Baba au Rhum, Rum Baba, on sale with cherries on the top.
Photograph courtesy of Anonymous.

Order a Rum Baba, and you will, usually, be served an individual sponge cake made with dried fruit, mostly raisins; it will be soaked in rum and served with an apricot sauce. The original Rum Baba, (Baba au Rhum), was a whole sponge cake cut into slices for the diners, and some cafes and restaurants still make their Baba au Rhum that way. Unfortunately, some cafes and restaurants have replaced the rum with an artificial rum-flavored liquid and completely forgotten about the apricot sauce.

The correct rum used for the Baba au Rhum will have come from France’s Caribbean Island region of Martinique, the source of France’s only AOP rum. If you travel to Martinique or the relatively nearby islands of Guadeloupe, remember that they are as much a part of France as Paris while they are in the Caribbean. You will need Euros to buy their rum and to buy a Baba au Rhum when you visit.

The apricots for the indispensable apricot sauce will probably have come from France’s extensive apricot growing regions in Occitanie, Provence, and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. (If you visit these areas during June through August, you will be offered apricots at every meal and in nearly every dish).

French AOP Rhum; rum from Martinique.
Photograph courtesy of Steve Bennett
www.flickr.com/photos/63439615@N00/4619949145/

Baba au Rhum was created for the ex-king Stanislas Leszczynski

when he had become Duke of Lorraine and Bar in Northern France.

Before Stanislas became a French Duke, he had been King of Poland and the Grand-Duke of Lithuania; he came to France when he lost the job of King of Poland for the second time. (Job prospects for kings who have been fired are not that good; even more so if they have been fired twice). Luckily, Stanislas had an unemployment insurance policy that was a job seeker’s dream. Stanislas was the father of France’s Queen Marie, which made King Louis VX of France his son-in-law. King Louis of France had to find something for his unemployed father-in-law to do. Stanislas was created Duke of Lorraine and Bar, a province in the North of France, and given a palace; who could ask for anything more?

The Duke’s banquet.

(The scene for the serving of the first Rum Baba     

Stanislas ran his new palace in the royal manner that he had learned while King of Poland. At one of his first banquets, Stanislas chose for the dessert a traditional Polish sponge cake made with dried fruit, mostly raisins. The cake was to be doused in a sweet Hungarian Tokay wine and covered in an apricot sauce.   

A whole sponge cake waiting to be soaked in rum.
Photograph courtesy of Olga’s Flavor Factory.

The Baba au Rhum

In the château, the cook's assistant was a Polish countrywoman whose name has been lost in the smoke of the palace kitchens. (Before the days of political correctness, I would not have written countrywoman; I would have written peasant. However, today the cook's assistant is a Polish countrywoman). This countrywoman had come to France from Poland with Stanislas's retinue of retainers and servants. When she discovered that the kitchen's stores were out of the required sweet Hungarian Tokay wine, like any experienced cook, she was unfazed; in the absence of sweet Tokay wine, she added rum to the sponge cake, and the rest is history. The Duke so enjoyed the new recipe that he named it Baba au Rhum, "The Country Woman with Rum."   

A kitchen from the 1700s.
Photograph courtesy of The Historic Interior

Today many restaurants serve Rum Babas as individual-sized sponge cakes rather than as a whole cake. These individual sponge cakes are soaked in rum and served with an apricot sauce just as an entire cake would be. 

Ali Baba and Rum Baba?

The story of Rum Baba and Ali Baba is linked to Patisserie Stohrer, an excellent cake shop in Paris. Patisserie Stohrer gives the honor of the creation of Rum Baba to its founder Nicholas Stohrer. Nicholas Stohrer is said to be part of Stanislas's daughter's Polish retinue when she married King Louis of France and became Queen Marie. Stohrer's makes excellent Rum Babas and many other pastries. However, assigning the creation of the dish to himself, the wine initially used to Malaga wine, and the name to Stanislas's supposed love for the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and the use of crème pâtissier is problematic. At worst, it may be a case of lèse-majesté; after all, Stanislas Leszczynski was or had been, Nicholas Stohrer's King.  

The Savarin or Savarin au Rhum

The Savarin or Savarin au Rum is a Rum Baba with added Chantilly cream. (Chantilly cream is whipped cream flavored with vanilla).

   

Savarin au Rhum.
Photograph courtesy of Kingfox
www.flickr.com/photos/kingfox/2451290695/

Brillat-Savarin – The first philosopher of food.

The creator of the Savarin is disputed; however, the origin of the name Savarin in not. The Rum Baba with Chantilly cream was named after Jeanne Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 -1826). Brillat-Savarin, an attorney, was one of the first writers who dedicated himself to the education of early French foodies. After exiling himself to the United States for three years during the French Revolution's worst days, he abandoned politics. He dedicated himself to food, earning himself the title The First Philosopher of Food. His most famous work was entitled the Physiologie du Goût, The Physiology of Taste. Despite the years since he passed on, Savarin has not been forgotten; a triple fat, a 75% fat, cow'scow's milk cheese from Normandy was renamed as the Savarin in the 1930s. Many of Savarin'sSavarin's famous quotations are still being used, including "The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star." " (When I got married, good friends gave me a copy of Savarin's book).   

Front cover of an 1847 edition of the Physiologie du Goût.
The Physiology of Taste
by
Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin
Photograph courtesy of the National Library of France.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9012870m?rk=21459;2

It does not matter who first added Chantilly cream to a Rum Baba it was named after Savarin and his grave in Paris’s Pere Lachaise Cemetery is a place of pilgrimage for foodies.

Tombstone of Brillat Savarin.
In the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris's 20th arrondissement.
Also buried in the same cemetery is Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein and Edith Piaf among many others.
Photograph courtesy of David Conway through findagrave.com

The story behind King Louis’s gift of Lorraine and Bar
Stanislas and Stanislas’s rule in the Lorraine.

King Louis VX, apart from keeping his wife happy by finding a job for her unemployed father, he also wanted to keep Stanislas a long way from Paris and court intrigues. In 1737, King Louis swapped the then French-owned region of Tuscany, now part of Italy, for the still French region of Lorraine; at that time, Lorraine was owned by the German Emperor Francis III of Hapsburg-Lorraine.  

Stanislas was to rule Lorraine and Bar with the provision that Lorraine returned to France upon his death. Included in the job's fringe benefits was the Château de Lunéville, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Lorraine. This château is, in fact, a palace, and is called, with good reason, the Versailles of the Lorraine. King Louis's wife was happy, and her father was busy and far enough from Paris so that he would not be visiting too often. If you look at France's map, Nancy's city is 300 km (186 miles) from Paris; today, that's just 90 minutes door-to-door on a French TGV train. Then, in the 18th century, that same 300 km was about a week's ride, or more, in a bumpy carriage pulled by horses. Included in the travel plans would be the nights spent in inns, with little to offer in the way of amenities. In the winter, the roads were often impassable, and travel by water was not much faster and still required nights at an inn on land.

Lunéville, where Stanislas's palace is situated, is just outside the city of Nancy, today the Prefecture, the departmental capital, of Meurthe-et-Moselle; then part of the region of Lorraine; but, since 1-1-2016, part of the super-region of the Grande Est. The city of Nancy has over 400,000 inhabitants and beautiful and large public squares built by Stanislas during his thirty-year insightful and, for the times, compassionate rule. Stanislas's works have put Nancy on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the most famous of the squares is called the "Place Stanislas." If you visit Nancy, remember that, in the evening, your dessert must be a Baba au Rhum, or a Savarin au Rhum, and a glass of French AOC rum raised to the memory of the good Duke Stanislas.

The Château de Lunéville
Photograph courtesy of Alexandre Prévot
www.flickr.com/photos/alexprevot/5893890790

King Louis XIV and the Lorraine and Corsica.

Another story about King Louis XV for the history aficionados, King Louis did more than just swap Tuscany for the Lorraine (now part of France's Grand Est). Later, in 1760, King Louis's armies conquered Corsica and also made that island part of France. That same year that Louis VIX conquered Corsica, a future ruler of France was born on the island; Emperor Napoléon1 was born on Corsica in 1760. 

Then 150 years later, Emperor Napoléon 1's great-great-grand-nephew Charles Joseph Bonaparte as Attorney General of the USA in 1908 created the force of Special Agents that became the FBI.

Brillat-Savarin, Grimod, and Cambacérès
The first French foodies.

Along with Brillat-Savarin, two other French foodies helped direct the changes in French cuisine; they were Grimod de la Reynière (Alexandre Balthazar) (1758 – 1838) and Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824). They were the first publicly accepted and published restaurant critics in France, or for that matter in the world.

Cambacérès was an attorney and a prominent activist in the French revolution and would become the Second Consul of France under General Bonaparte. When General Bonaparte crowned himself, Emperor Cambacérès continued as an advisor and was the author of much of the Napoleonic code. 

Grimod published the first foodie magazine, the Almanach des Gourmands, the Gourmand's Almanac.  Grimod and Cambacérès also wrote and published critiques about the food caterers of their time.   

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

Copyright 2010, 2014, 2018, 2020

 

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