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Mr. Fabrizio Mangoni, "just like Stanislao, an urbanist and a gourmet", as he describes himselfshimself, recounted the former Polish king's alleged invention of the ''babà'' in even more colour:

| The golden, wavy, spongy surface had just detached from the mould. It looked like something between a turban and a pagoda, an architecture with a new texture, built out of concentric cirles circles growing smaller and smaller towards the top. Stanislao soon understood that he had found an answer to his own desires. It looked soft and was supple to the touch. Its fine texture and the scent it spread made it an absolute novelty. Even before tasting it, he knew that he had invented a dessert like no other in his land or in his times; a rare point of equilibrium between consistency and lightness. A bit like his own life.

This is the beginning of the long journey of the babà, a mythical dessert invented in the mid-18th century by Stanislao Lekzinsky [sic], ex-King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine at the time. A journey which has many links with the Orient. Stanislao had spent much time in Ottoman captivity and had the opportunity to study and sketch the architecture of that land, which would later inspire the pavillions pavilions decorating his ducal palace, along with an enormous theatre of automata. At first, the babà was dry, filled with sultana and Corinthian raisins, and, most importantly, it spread the scent of saffron. For its exoticism, the novelty of its taste and texture, Stanislao dubbed the dessert Ali Baba, in reference to One Thousand and One Nights, whose French translation he had read during his stay in the sultan's prison in Constantinople.

According to one popular publication about the history of France, the rum baba dates back all the way to antiquity. The French term for this dessert, ''baba au rhum'' may have come from the name of a Roman military camp called Babaorum. In Julius CeasarCaesar's time, it was one of the four Roman camps surrounding the last independent Gaulish village in Armorica. The other three were called Laudanum, Petibonum and Aquarium.<ref>{{Cyt

[[File:Adam Setkowicz.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.6|A Polish girl carrying an Easter ''baba'', visually extended by her pleaded pleated skirt (1936)]]

So which of these multiple meanings gave rise to ''"baba"'', the bundt cake? Did the cake use to resemble a [https://www.google.com/search?q=baby+kamienne&tbm=isch pagan stone idol,] which is also called ''"baba"'' in Polish? Or does the cake's name come from its resemblance to a peasant woman's long pleaded pleated skirt? Or perhaps, it comes from the fact that it's always been old women who were most experienced in the tricky art of yeast-cake baking?

After all, baking a beautifuilbeautiful, tall, airy ''baba'' was one of the most demanding tasks Polish home cooks ever had to face. Great care was needed to prevent the cake from sinking or browning a little too much. A housewife who aimed for the perfect ''baba'' had to start by choosing the best ingredients – high-quality wheat flour, good beer yeast and fresh butter. The oven had to be heated as much as possible, so that it could keep a constant temperature for a long time. The moulds had to be perfectly clean before being filled with dough and popped into the oven. Then came the almost magical practices whose goal was to prevent the ''baba'' from "catching a cold" and falling. Doors and windows were sealed to avoid draughts, women walked on their toes and talked in whispers when close to the oven, and finally, the ''baba'' was gently placed on down pillows for cooling. And of course, no men were allowed in the kitchen; the baking of a ''baba'' was a ''baby''-only affaire.<ref>{{Cyt

[[File:Stohrer Paris.jpg|thumb|left|Inside the Stohrer pastryshop pastry shop in Paris]]

In pre-revolutionary France, rum was rare anyway, mostly due to high custom duties, imposed to protect the producers of domestic brandies and other alcohols. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the French learned to appreciate the English punch, which was made from Carribean Caribbean sugar-cane rum. In the 1840s, rum started to appear in French dessert recipes. And so the tasty legend of a Polish king who soaked a dry ''kouglof'' in rum and named it after a fairy-tale protagonist, falls apart like a house of cards. Mr. Michael Krondl, a food historian, has put it best: