"Mat" wrote in message.............

> And as for international profile, well...
> all renounced their citizenship of NZ.

Phar Lap - bred in Timaru, New Zealand
The Finn brothers - born and bred in Te Awamutu - and still here
Russell Crowe - Australian (no dispute) couldn't fight his way out of a
paper bag.
Pavlova - sorry Mat, now undisputedly accepted as NZ in origin (read below -
source - Australia)

WHERE DID PAVLOVAS COME FROM?

This, I believe, should be the final word on the origins of the pav and
comes from the following highly authoritative AUSTRALIAN reference:
M.Symons, "One continuous picnic: a history of eating in Australia", Duck
Press, Adelaide, 1982. There's a long section on the Pav, its recipe and its
origins but I'll excerpt the most important bits:
"A symphony of silence! So Pavlova has been described," began the report in
the West Australian on Tuesday, July 9, 1929. "But who, seeing the famous
ballerina for the first time as she stood on the deck... at Fremantle
yesterday, could apply the description? It was Babel itself!" The reporter
managed to share her cab into Perth... "They are funny, these Australians,"
she pronounced in the cab... The next night she gave the first of 11
evening... performances... "Exquisite Pavlova!..." began the West
Australian. It was her only Perth season, on her second Australian tour. She
died two years later. Yet her memory survived at her hotel, the Esplanade,
because there six years later the chef whipped up the meringue and cream
cake which perpetuates her name....

"In 1934, Mrs. Elizabeth Paxton succeeded her husband as licensee of the
Esplanade and under her invigorated guidance the afternoon teas became very
desirable occasions.... One day she called in her manager... and they
approached their chef [Bert Sachse] to devise something special... Bert
Sachse experimented for a month.... According to Paxton family tradition,
the pavlova was named at a meeting at which Sachse presented the now
familiar cake. The family say that either the licensee...or the
manager...(as Sachse also said) remarked, "It is as light as Pavlova".

[The author then explains how he proceeded to research the NZ claim.] "To
help check for me, librarians of the National Library of New Zealand kindly
consulted their collection of cookery books. In fact, they found a recipe
for "Pavlova cakes" ... published in 1929. The ingredients were roughly
those of a pavlova, but it was not the pavlova as we know it, because the
mixture was baked into three dozen little meringues. It seems a coincidence
that the NZ cook was impressed by the ballerina's lightness and whiteness.

"But there is more to the NZ claim than this. Even earlier, in "Terrace
Tested Recipes", collected by the ladies of Terrace Congregational Church,
the second edition published in Wellington in 1927, there was a recipe
submitted by a Mrs. McRae for Meringue Cake. [He then describes the recipe].
From similar recipes published in 1933 and 1934, I think it is fair to say
that the Meringue Cake was common in NZ in the early 1930s. Its form varied,
but it was to all intents and purposes what we know as a "Pavlova",
sometimes even complete with passionfruit on top.

"Bert Sachse said in a magazine interview in 1973 that he sought to improve
the Meringue Cake. There was a prize-winning recipe for Meringue Cake in the
"Women's Mirror" on April 2, 1935. It contained vinegar, but no cornflour
and was of two parts filled with whipped cream. The recipe was contributed
by "Rewa", who happened to be of Rongotai, NZ. If Sachse read the "Women's
Mirror" and other magazines for ideas, as his widow told me, he might have
seen this recipe. We can concede that New Zealanders discovered the secret
delights of the large meringue with the "marshmallow centre", the heart of
the pavlova. But it seems reasonable to assume that someone in Perth
attached the name of the ballerina...

"It is possible, if ungenerous, to deride the pavlova for culinary
innocence. It was adopted from New Zealand. Yet Herbert Sachse made a
genuine, crystallising contribution."

However, though it may pain many, it is now accepted that Sachse used the
original New Zealand recipe which had been widely used for a decade in New
Zealand.

(end)

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st.helier