Pavlova Gate!!!!

Who created the Pavlova?

Recently, I was making a Pavlova and it made me think about who created it.

The pavlova is a beautiful meringue dessert with fresh whipped cream and fresh fruit on top. 

Named after the Russian Ballerina, Anna Pavlova, who visited New Zealand and Australia in the 1920's. The meringue dessert resembles her beautiful white ballerina costume.

Both countries still claim it as theirs! The Oxford dictionary favours New Zealand's case. Stating the first recorded recipe for pavlova was in the 1927 book Davis Dainty Dishes, a publication by Davis Gelatine (NZ).

Keith Money, a biographer of Anna Pavlova, wrote that a hotel chef in Wellington created the dish when Pavlova visited the capital in 1926 on her world tour.

Professor Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist at the University of Otago, New Zealand has compiled a library of cookbooks containing 667 pavlova recipes from more than 300 sources. Her book, The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand's Culinary History, states that the first Australian pavlova recipe was created in 1935, while an earlier version was penned in 1929 in the rural magazine NZ Dairy Exporter Annual.

The Australian website Australian Flavour gives an even earlier date of 1926 for its creation, suggesting that Home Cookery for New Zealand, by E Futter, contained a recipe for "Meringue with Fruit Filling". This recipe was similar to today's version of the dessert. It was never called 'Pavlova' though!

However, it has also been claimed that Bert Sachse created the dish at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth, Western Australia in 1935. In defense of his claim as inventor of the dish, a relative of Sachse's wrote to Leach suggesting that Sachse may have accidentally dated the recipe incorrectly.
Leach replied they could not find evidence "because it's just not showing up in the cookbooks until the 1940s in Australia".

Now to throw a spanner in the works. I have found some other information that may cause a stir! 

In 1720, a Swiss pastry-cook called Gasparini, practised his art in (Mehrinyghen) meringue, in a small town in the State of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany. Even the venerable Larousse perpetrates this myth, in complete disregard for the fact that confections made from sweetened, stiffly-beaten egg whites appear in cookbooks printed well before that date. The earliest I can find appears in the recipe collection of Lady Elinor Fettiplace, which is dated 1604, which she calls White Bisket Bread. 

To Make White Bisket Bread. (Original Recipe)

Take a pound & a half of sugar, & an handful of fine white flower [flour], the whites of twelve eggs, beaten verie finelie, and a little annisseed brused, temper all this together, till it be no thicker than pap, make coffins with paper, and put it into the oven, after the manchet [bread] is drawn.
Note: this is clearly what we would call ‘meringue’, but Lady Elinor does not use the name. 

The first use that I am aware of (and I stand willing to be corrected) is in the cookbook of François Massialot, the first chef of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715). His book was published in 1692, and contained a chapter on “Meringues and Macaroons”.

For something different try this beautiful Pavlova roll.......


Peach and Passionfruit Pavlova Roll

Ingredients 

Three quarters of a cup caster sugar 
4 egg whites 
Half a cup flaked almonds
300ml thickened cream 
1 tablespoon of icing sugar
400g tub of sliced peaches in juice, drained, chopped 

2 passionfruit, halved 

Icing sugar to serve 

Method

 

Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease a 25cm x 30cm Swiss roll pan. Line with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang on all sides. Place a second sheet of baking paper on a flat surface. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon caster sugar.

Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add remaining caster sugar. Beat for 10 minutes or until sugar has dissolved. Spread mixture over prepared pan. Smooth top. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake for 10 minutes or until top just starts to brown.

Meanwhile, using an electric mixer, beat cream and icing sugar until stiff peaks form. Pat peaches dry with paper towel.

Turn meringue onto prepared baking paper. Remove lining paper. Cool for 30 minutes. Spread with cream mixture. Top with peaches and passionfruit pulp. Roll up meringue from one long end to enclose filling. Place on a plate and refrigerate for 1 hour. 

Serve dusted with icing sugar.

Enjoy!!!