Entry · Monday, September 28, 2026
Plate CXXIII. Close-up of rum baba desserts with cream and pistachios.
Rum Baba
/rum BAH-bah/ n.- 1. A yeasted French pastry of pronounced vertical girth, soaked through its full cross-section in rum syrup until the crumb achieves a density that registers on contact; typically crowned with cream and finished with pistachios, the garnish functioning less as decoration than as a formal acknowledgment of what lies beneath.
- 2. colloq. Pillowy, bottom-heavy, and saturated to the core. The cream on top is not the point. The cream on top has always known it is not the point.
"The pastry chef set a thiccc rum baba in front of the table and stepped back to let it introduce itself. The pistachios were a formality."
From Polish baba (old woman; also a type of tall, cylindrical cake), related to Russian baba of the same meaning. The rum-soaked variant was popularized in 18th-century Paris, credited variously to the court of Stanislaw I of Poland and to the Parisian patissier Nicolas Stohrer, who opened his shop in 1730 and has been winning arguments about it ever since.
Filed by
It is soaked through its full cross-section and still holds its shape. That is the whole case.
Ruling ADMITTED
Yeasted, vertical, soaked through the full cross-section, and still structurally coherent. The crumb did the work. Admitted.
In the margin
The pastry chef stepped back. The rum baba introduced itself. These are the events, in order.
Also received REJECTED
Submitted: a zip tie. A zip tie bundles things together under real tension, which is basically a cross-section commitment, similar to the baba!
It is a thin plastic strip. It has never been thiccc.