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| oryg = J’ai encore huitaine à passer ici. Priez Dieu que je ne meure pas d’indigestion. On nous apporte tous les jours de Champigny les plus furieuses et les plus perfides anguilles, et puis des petits melons d’Astracan, puis de la sauerkraut, et puis des perdrix aux choux, et puis des perdreaux à la crapaudine, et puis des baba, et puis des pâtés, et puis des tourtes, et puis douze estomacs qu’il faudrait avoir {{...}} Heureusement on boit en proportion, et tout passe.
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Somehow, along the way, the ''"baba"'' lost its original feminine gender and its association with women, becoming a masculine noun in both French (''"le baba"'') and, later, Italian (''"il babà"''), which may explain how the Ali Baba connection may have seemed plausible to non-Slavs.
In 1730, Stohrer decided to start his own business, so he opened – next to the northern coach terminus in Paris, at Mont Orgueilleux (now Montorgueil Street) – the oldest Parisian pastry shop still in operation. Did he sell ''babas / kouglofs'' there? Most probably. Were they imbibed with rum? Probably not, at least not from the start. 18th-century sources are quite unanimous in describing the ''baba'' as coloured with saffron and studded with raisins, without any mention of rum. At the beginning of the 19th century, the great gourmet Grimod de La Reynière would already attribute the baba to Stanislas, but it still wasn't the rum baba.