Stohrer's rum baba
Sweet, plump emblem of the city of Naples, rum baba nevertheless has a... French history. Nicolas Stohrer is the pastry chef of the King of Poland, then exiled in Alsace. He wants to eat a babka (briochestyle loaf) but it is too dry. The pastry chef then soaks it in wine: baba is born. Following a marriage that reunites the two courts, Stohrer opens his first shop in Paris in 1730, on rue Montorgueuil, where gourmands from around the world still come to taste the golden cork-shaped cake now soaked in syrup and rum. It is during the French occupation of Naples that Italians discover what will also become their national dessert. And Stohrer’s baba has every reason to go down in history.
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