Pav deconstructed: How to make the perfect pavlova - and why we still argue about its origins
The contentious issue of who discovered the pavlova has bounced across the ditch for decades. No matter its origin, it’s still a favourite. Photo / Christall Lowe
Insults continue to bounce like perfectly formed marshmallows across the Tasman over the invention of the pavlova. Did it originate in New Zealand in 1926, coinciding with a visit by the ballerina Anna Pavlova, or in Australia some years later? In fact,its origins may go back much further and have little to do with home chefs. It’s a rivalry that has also spawned a lot of words. Australian researcher and writer Michael Symons notes “the pavlova is not merely a cluster of recipes and results on a plate. It is also a cluster of personal memories, public myths, treasured ideals and associated names …” The fascination with the iconic dessert has now inspired an anthology of writings on the subject, Pav Deconstructed, from which we present the following edited extracts.
Bringing pavlova home
By Andrew Paul Wood and Annabelle Utrecht
In 1971, Australian journalist and humorist Ross Campbell wrote in The Australian Women’s Weekly that, while visiting the Harrods cake department in London, he encountered a pavlova labelled in a way that was shocking: “This cake was created in New Zealand in honour of the dancer Anna Pavlova.”
In the article, Campbell went on to say, “The pavlova, surely, is an Australian invention. It must be, because it is made with our native passionfruit. Furthermore, on closer inspection I found that the Harrods ‘pavlova cake’ had no passionfruit on it, only peaches. My faith in Harrods was badly shaken.”
Outraged, Campbell rebuked the department store in a letter, and the card was removed. The Australian claim to the pav is a tenacious and hard-fought one. The most commonly given story is that, in 1934 or 1935, Bert Sachse, a chef at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth, invented the cake to retroactively honour the eponymous ballerina’s Australian tours of 1926 or 1929. This is almost certainly false – recipes for identical meringue cakes under different names abounded in cookbooks at the time. The “Dying Swan” had a tendency to license her name for everything from soups to frogs’ legs – and even a 1911 New Zealand glacé dessert, Strawberries Pavlova – so there is nothing particularly unusual in the naming.
The tradition of a New Zealand origin for the pavlova is likewise as substantial as the cake’s marshmallowy middle. It can’t be pinned down to a name or kitchen but is usually dated to the ballerina’s 1926 tour of Aotearoa. One of the main sources for such an attribution, Anna Pavlova’s biographer Keith Money, was a New Zealand expat living in London, so this may be a flicker of patriotism on his part. Money claimed it was invented in a hotel in Wellington and that it was dressed in kiwifruit, inspired by one of the dancer’s costumes.
Regardless of who invented it, dessert cakes of meringue, whipped cream and fruit were well established in Australia and New Zealand by the 1920s, and the pavlova cold war was well entrenched by the 1950s. Queen Elizabeth II must have been thoroughly bilious at the thought of one more mouthful of pav on her coronation tour of the Commonwealth in 1953-54. Pavlova featured at many of the 110 special functions Her Majesty attended in New Zealand, including the Gore Women’s Club dinner, whose menu offered Peach Pavlova Cake.
The Queen then went on an eight-week tour of Australia. The mayor of Greater Wollongong, Alderman Jerry Kelly, awkwardly recounted: “The Queen had a little of everything that was on the menu. She had something of each course, excepting the meringue passionfruit sweet. She baulked at that. I think it was the passionfruit. If we had had strawberries instead of the passionfruit, I think it would have been a different story. We tried to get strawberries but couldn’t. The Duke had the lot.”
The 1977 issue of The Good Food Guide (the guide book to British restaurants) describes pavlova as from New Zealand, but the 1978 issue calls it Australian.
Michael Symons wrote to the editor, Hilary Fawcett, who replied: “There does seem to be some controversy as to whether the wretched thing originated in New Zealand or Australia and I was reduced to doing a straw-vote count.”