Whisked Debate

Helen Leach, an academic at Otago University, is hoping to settle the origins of the pavlova with recipes found in a 1933 Mothers’ Union cookbook and in a 1929 rural magazine, both calling the dessert a pavlova and stipulating the same ingredients and method used by modern cooks. Australians have long believed it was created in 1935 by a chef called Bert Sachse, at Perth’s Esplanade Hotel, in honour of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, pictured, who visited Australia in 1926 and again in 1929. While many New Zealanders resent Australia’s habit of appropriating anything or anyone famous to emerge from their country, trans-Tasman rivalries are generally light-hearted. Australian television personality, Rove McManus, raised hackles in New Zealand recently when he described the country as “the cousin at the party with the short trousers”.