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The confection of a nation: the social invention and social construction ofthe PavlovaMichael Symons

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RESEARCH ARTICLE

The confection of a nation: the social invention and social constructionof the Pavlova

Michael Symons*

Croydon, New South Wales, Australia

(Received 31 January 2009; final version received 20 October 2009)

Both Australians and New Zealanders claim the Pavlova (a large meringue cake,covered in cream and fruit) as their national dish. The historical record does notsettle its birthplace. On the contrary, published recipes reveal the complex processof social invention through the swapping of practical experience across bothcountries. The illusion of a singular creation can be explained by distinguishing asecond, associated level of social construction. This applies to the more idealprocesses through which cooks and eaters attached a name, meanings and myths,producing a widely-held concept that was deceptively distinct. The Pavlovaevolved along with other social constructs, notably femininity and nationalism,which became ironic in tone. Typically consisting of a set of instructions (‘‘take1/2 lb sugar’’) and an often figurative title (‘‘Pavlova’’), recipes are valuablehistorical sources for mapping the social invention of material items and thesocial construction of ideas about them.

Keywords: recipes; Pavlova; social invention; social construction; ironicnationalism

Introduction

Australians and New Zealanders both claim as their national dish a large, cream-

covered meringue cake called the Pavlova. The fruit topping of passionfruit in one

country and lately kiwifruit in the other provides a minor distinguishing mark. An

ownership dispute fed by journalists and politicians since the 1970s has led

lexicographers, food writers and culinary historians on a recipe hunt. Common-

sense seems to require that such a distinct, named entity has an original version and

individual creator. The search, however, has located no singular birthplace, but

something more interesting. The Pavlova is the work of innumerable people in both

countries, and beyond.

Advocating that cooks share knowledge through newspaper columns, the far-

sighted Australian cookery writer Mina Rawson recognised the ‘‘cleverness of the

whole number’’ (1895, 14).1 However, the idea that the Pavlova is a collaborative

confection might be hard to demonstrate to partisans � New Zealand prime minister

John Key still suggested recently that Leach (2008) had settled the matter (Marks

2009).

*Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1035-0330 print/1470-1219 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10350330903566004

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Social Semiotics

Vol. 20, No. 2, April 2010, 197�217

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The approach adopted here distinguishes two levels of social creation. The first is

termed social invention, referring to the swapping of practical experience. The second

level, social construction, applies to the more ideal processes through which cooks

and eaters attach a name, along with various meanings and myths. The Pavlova

became such a vividly-held social construct that it gave the illusion of one-off

creation. The processes of social invention and construction are far from

independent. As we shall see, the material results not only suggested the name,

but the name helped fix the recipe. Yet separate analyses explain the one-and-only‘‘true’’ large meringue.

Social construction has been a central theme of the social sciences in recent

decades, and the cake also throws light on other constructs, particularly changing

ideas of femininity and nationality. The Pavlova arose with industrialised food

distribution to domestic kitchens; that is, during the modern era of nation-building

and home-building. Named after a glamorous Russian ballerina, who seemed to

epitomise femininity in the 1920s and 1930s, it became celebrated during the 1960s

and 1970s, during a later stage in food industrialisation, when women were being

liberated from the kitchen. Likewise, it became a national symbol when production

was increasingly globalised. This made its recognition not merely nostalgic but a

particular form of what will be termed ‘‘ironic nationalism’’.

The collective creation of the Pavlova can be mapped with exceptional precision

using recipe books and related sources. The first half of this article discovers where

Pavlova recipes came from, and the second investigates their glorification and their

feminine and eventual national appeal.

Where do recipes come from?

As written prompts for cooks, recipes have been recorded in astonishing numbers for

at least 3700 years, gaining quantitative precision and becoming increasingly

common during the nineteenth century (Symons 2003). Australians and New

Zealanders alone published an estimated 13,000 and 3000 books of recipes,

respectively, during the twentieth century.

Intellectual interest in culinary history can be detected in John L. Hess and

Karen Hess’s The taste of America (1977) and Jean-Francois Revel’s Un festin en

paroles in 1979 (translated as Culture and cuisine; Revel 1982), and clearly emerged in

the English journal Petit Propos Culinaires, which Alan Davidson launched in 1979

(Jaine 2003), and the Oxford Symposiums on Food and Cookery, in which Davidson

was also a founding figure, from 1981.The origins of particular recipes became a characteristic concern. To give an

example, the Sally Lunn teacake was believed to be named after a seller in Bath

(England). However, French cooks boasted the similar Solilemne (presumably from

the cake’s appearance from soleil et lune) since at least in 1815. Was the Sally Lunn

borrowed as the Solilemne? Or was the English a corruption of the French name?

Adding to the puzzle, the trusted English authority, Eliza Acton, provided a recipe in

1845 for ‘‘Solimemne. A rich French breakfast cake, or Sally Lunn’’ (Davidson 1999,

684). Although reaching such impasses in search after search, culinary historians

presumed they just needed more evidence, rather than to generalise why this might

happen. Besides, Davidson was fascinated by ‘‘the most arcane ingredients or the

complex lineage of food customs, recipes and techniques’’, and eschewed ‘‘the

198 M. Symons


anthropology or sociology of cookery’’ and certainly any whiff of theory (Jaine

2003).

Reacting against another preoccupation with exposing recipe ‘‘plagiarism’’,

sociologist Stephen Mennell argued in 1984 (although not published until 2001) that

‘‘the very idea of originality in a recipe is itself almost an invention of the bourgeois

age’’ (Mennell 2004, 183). But his was an unusual intervention, because culinary

history only became academically respectable in the late 1990s, initially for thosewith an interest in women’s roles (for example, Bower 1997; Inness 2001). This

present Pavlova study (by an Australian) emerges from multifaceted recipe research,

led by Professor Helen Leach (a New Zealander).2

An intense search for the origins of three-dozen cakes and biscuits presumed to

have been created in Australia and New Zealand between 1890 and 1940 suggests

that, with one or two possible exceptions, they are typically social inventions

(Symons 2008). If a cake or biscuit had one prototype, subsequent recipes would

show increasing diversity, as cooks made changes. This happened to the Peach

Melba, invented by French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846�1935), and subsequently

corrupted. Instead, cake and biscuit recipes tend to converge towards popular forms

and names, with only later, deliberate variation.

Anzac biscuits, Afghans, Neenish tarts, and so on emerged from a highly creative

community. Cookbook collector Duncan Galletly (2005) compiled a database of

21,550 cake and biscuit names from 180 New Zealand books published before 1950.

Several standards showed up (e.g. ‘‘Orange Cake’’), and yet Galletly found a total of

4604 different names. Reinforcing this evidence of considerable experimentation,

virtually no recipes were directly lifted from one book to another.Leach (1997) already rejected the ‘‘myth of the heroic inventor’’ with respect to

the Pavlova, but this only raised the reverse puzzle � why do some recipes succeed?

No longer just some experimental or indefinite variant, they gain the stature of a

meaningful item. Numerous possibilities are tasty, attractive and useful, and yet

certain recipes become noted, standard, classic or authentic.

The creative process is not teleological. Each cook might intend an immediate

result, but not to collaborate widely on an outcome such as the Pavlova. Individuals

might ‘‘vote’’ by transmitting a favourite recipe, but no official election is held or

winner formally declared. So how are these standard dishes dreamed up and agreed?

The idea of collaborative or social invention is not sufficient. Certain results become

widely known, supported by myths. This implies social construction, centred on a

name.

Recipes prove to be especially handy resources for this type of social and cultural

research because their typical form � a set of instructions under a heading � neatly

encodes the material and ideal. The instructions (‘‘take 1/2 lb sugar’’) are closely tiedto material realities, so that scholars can track responses to new products and

historical movements (Leach and Inglis 2003). While some recipe titles are mundane

(‘‘To boil an egg’’), others are clear markers of the ideal realm of images, memories,

desires and ideologies. As a simple New Zealand example, cooks turned ‘‘German

biscuits’’ into ‘‘Belgian biscuits’’ during the Great War.

Prescribing the ‘‘cultural elaboration of natural substances’’, as Claude Levi-

Strauss puts it (1978, 470), recipes provide intricate details of both our material and

our symbolic cultures. To borrow again from Levi-Strauss, foods are not just ‘‘good

to eat’’, but also ‘‘good to think’’ (1963, 89).

Social Semiotics 199


Part 1: concocting a cake

Modernity and mass kitchens

Australia and New Zealand enjoyed a golden age of cake and biscuit baking in the

first four decades of the twentieth century. This was an era of nation-building and

home-building, when most women were full-time housewives. Only 27% of New

Zealand women were in paid employment in 1901. They were mainly young, and

44% of them worked in domestic service, which served as a form of apprenticeship to

becoming a housewife (Statistics New Zealand 2001, 110).

Industry pursued the mass distribution of basic commodities. The paradigm was

sugar, worked by African slaves shipped across the Atlantic, to make a former luxury

widely accessible in Europe (Mintz 1985). Sugar emerged with the other basic

Pavlova ingredients from the capital-intensive agriculture of late-nineteenth-century

Australia and New Zealand. A key technological advance was the centrifugal cream

separator, arriving in Mittagong, NSW in 1881 (Symons 2007, 103). Another

Pavlova element, passionfruit, became such a speciality of growers that Australia

(rather than South America) seemed like the fruit’s original habitat � just as, in the

next century, Chinese gooseberries became identified with New Zealand and were

renamed ‘‘kiwifruit’’.

These basic materials were distributed to housewives in modern, labour-saving

kitchens, whose emblematic technology was the iron stove. Gas was used in the

nineteenth century, and soon electricity, although wood and coal continued to be

valued. The Coronation cookery book of the Country Women’s Association of NSW

still spoke of baking in a ‘‘meringue’’ oven, which meant ‘‘to make meringue at night

after the dinner is over and allow to stay in the oven when fire is out, until morning,

but do not forget to remove it before the fire is lighted in the early a.m.’’ (Sawyer and

Moore-Sims 1937, 203 and 210). Mechanical refrigeration provided large blocks of

ice to keep dairy products domestically, and homes gained electric refrigerators from

the late 1920s.

Mass-provisioned kitchens were equipped with a further Pavlova determinant �the hand-cranked, counter-rotating, geared egg-beater. Older books spoke of

whisking egg-whites with a knife on a plate (Pearson 1889, 94). For fancier kitchens,

Harriet Wicken’s Kingswood cookery book hinted that a ‘‘wire egg whisk will be

found invaluable for whipping cream, Genoese pastry, &c.’’ (1898, 29). Preparing

eggs for a sponge required the cook to ‘‘whisk about twenty minutes, or until it has

risen well and looks white’’ (Wicken 1898, 248). Even more forbiddingly, a popular

import in the colonies, Beeton’s book of household management estimated: ‘‘About 1

hour to whip the cream’’ (Beeton 1861, 752).

Given such laboriousness, it is little wonder that collector Don Thornton has

enthused:

Without a doubt, it’s America’s greatest invention . . . The rotary crank eggbeaterrevolutionized cooking in America. It took the deadly drudgery out of mixing foodingredients. And that was a big mix, ranging from scrambled eggs, to cream, batters,cakes and scores of other desserts, breads and sauces. (1994, xi)

The first patent was granted on 23 December 1856, and Thornton lists a further

thousand in America alone. Among numerous local patents was the present author’s

beloved ‘‘Swift Whip’’ made in Australia by Propert, with its ‘‘ball driver’’ patented

in 1944 (Thornton 1994, 206).

200 M. Symons


Mina Rawson recommended a ‘‘Patent egg-beater’’ among 11 ‘‘labour-saving

machines’’ in her Antipodean cookery book and kitchen companion (1907, 6), and yet

she remained of the old school: ‘‘A patent egg-beater is merely optional; for my part,

I much prefer a fork’’ (Rawson 1907, 8). Nonetheless, recipe instructions moved overfrom predominantly ‘‘whip’’ and perhaps ‘‘whisk’’ in the 1890s to ‘‘beat’’ in the next

decades. The Coronation still advised ‘‘whip with an egg whipper’’, but added ‘‘use

rotary egg beater for preference’’ (Sawyer and Moore-Sims 1937, 209).

The mechanical beater slashed servant drudgery, enabling a lone cook to generate

clouds of snows, fluffs, flummeries, angel cakes (without yolks), sponge cakes (with)

and meringues. Along with the triumph of baking powder, aeration became a

commonplace of popular cooking in the early twentieth century, replicating some of

the refinements of great households. Not surprisingly, the United States also enjoyedmany Pavlova look-alikes (for example, ‘‘Crocker’’ 1950, 234), although often with

two layers, and often named ‘‘Schaum Torte’’ (Foam Cake), which a recent Joy of

cooking traces to the 1870s in Wisconsin (Rombauer, Rombauer Becker, and Becker

1999, 957).

Modern housewives gained another essential, the cookery book, which served as

an instruction manual for the new, mass food system. With some imported texts, and

earlier local instances, they appeared in increasing numbers in the Antipodes from

the 1890s. The books featured and advertised processed commodities, and, notinfrequently, devoted more than half their contents to cake and biscuit baking for

packed lunches, after-school snacks, afternoon teas and family and community

celebrations.

Early books

Early on, many popular recipe books were compiled by cookery teachers, with

Margaret Pearson, Harriet Wicken, Isabel Ross, Annie Bishop and Lucy Drakeamong those in Australia boasting of credentials from the National Training School

for Cookery, South Kensington (London). Such authors generally relayed estab-

lished techniques, rather than picking up local specialities. Even less responsive,

carrying virtually no local creations, were domestic science textbooks and manuals of

the sort aimed at newly-weds, such as the Whitcombe and Tombs Everyday series

running in New Zealand from 1901�1966 (e.g. see Anon. c. 1908).

A further genre, commercial promotions by the suppliers of foods and equipment

were often uninspired recipe borrowings. When home economists in ‘‘test kitchens’’devised recipes, these were surprisingly rarely taken up; virtually no local creations

have been traced back to such sources. Part of the success of New Zealand baking

powder manufacturer Edmonds’ beloved Sure to Rise cookery book, which

commenced in 1904 and is still counting, has been its unusual responsiveness to

recipes being used in actual kitchens.

More importantly for social invention, the twentieth century brought community

books. These were fund-raisers often for church charities, women’s organisations

and, later, schools. Not merely relying on the canon of established cakes and biscuits,these books relayed the proud results of testing and improving. Acknowledging that

they selected from a lively scene, the South Australian editors of the Kookaburra

(Anon. 1911) claimed that, ‘‘though a comprehensive selection is not ensured, a very

varied one is’’. Even seemingly repeated recipes had modifications, they explained,



‘‘and every cook knows that a very slight variation may make all the difference’’.

Community books could reflect actual practice with relative accuracy, but,

depending on committee work, they appeared erratically. While New Zealand

committees were especially active and quickly relayed many innovations (Symons2006a), in Australia one or two fund-raising books became ‘‘Bibles’’ in each State,

were taken up by commercial publishers, and appeared year after year without much

change.

Contributed recipes were generally signed, not for ownership but for testimonial

reasons, which is made clear by the South Australian Barossa’s subtitle, Every recipe

of proved merit and signed as such by the donors (Anon. c. 1932). This became the

case with recipes disseminated through the mass media, too. By the 1920s,

newspapers, magazines and then radio stations invited housewives to contribute,providing even faster exchange of innovations than in community books.

Broadcaster, magazine columnist and author ‘‘Aunt Daisy’’ (Maud Basham)

dedicated her first book (Daisy 1933�1934?) to ‘‘all my Listeners, all ‘the Girls’ in the

big ‘Family’’’. Explaining the title of her next, The NZ ‘‘Daisy Chain’’ cookery book

(Daisy 1934), she said that the ‘‘Daisy Chain’’ was the ‘‘name (chosen by

themselves), for the thousands of women who rally round ‘Aunt Daisy,’ and who

supply her with innumerable recipes, simple remedies, and household hints’’. Her

early responsiveness to local creativity no doubt helped her rise to fame. However,within a few years, she dropped contributors’ noms de plume, so that she seemed to

be the authority (Inglis 2006).

The most immediate transmission mode was hand-to-hand. Book collectors find

that original owners often used blank spaces and scraps of paper to jot down recipes

gleaned from friends and relatives or from radio � but even when these notes have

survived, they are usually hard to date. While not contributing verifiable early

Pavlova examples, these sources add snapshots of a vibrant culture of experimenta-

tion, recipe swapping and critical evaluation, as cooks took up new techniques andingredients, listened to praise and published successes.

Too many Pavlovas

Discussing ‘‘the holiest of holies, the pavlova’’ in New Zealand food: And how to

cook it (1991, 33), food writer David Burton declares that ‘‘unfortunately for the

Ockers [Australians] there is plenty of solid evidence that New Zealand came up

with a pavlova recipe much earlier’’ (1991, 67). He rested his case on the‘‘Meringue with Fruit Filling’’ in Home cookery for New Zealand (Futter 1927?).

Although without the ‘‘now-classic kiwifruit slices, it is clearly recognisable as a

pavlova’’, he claims (1991, 67). It also lacks vinegar and cornflour, at least one of

which came to be regarded as standard, and the top was lifted off, filled, and

replaced, rather than being simply coated. It also lacked the name. While Burton

is correct that generally accepted versions of the Pavlova emerged out of the wider

category of large meringues, unfortunately for New Zealand honour the book he

cites was a repackaging of Emily Futter’s Australian home cookery from perhaps1924 (Futter c. 1922).3 The ‘‘Meringue with Fruit Filling’’ is one example of many

such tangles.

Recipes called ‘‘Large Meringues’’ can be found especially in Australia by the

opening of the twentieth century, although even that is not simple. A recipe with that

202 M. Symons


name appeared in Mrs Forster Rutledge’s Goulburn cookery book, which commenced

its century-long reign in New South Wales in 1899, although the instructions are

ambiguous about the size of the results (for example, Rutledge 1906, 156). Again not

specifying size, the Coronation cookery book advised in 1937: ‘‘Large meringues may

be piled one on top of the other and joined with cream, flavoured to taste

(passionfruit cream and strawberry cream are delicious)’’ (Sawyer and Moore-Sims

1937, 210). Representing the profusion of similar recipes, the book also included

two for ‘‘Marshmallow Cake’’, one of which was two layers of meringue. A

‘‘Meringue Gateau’’ came closer to a conventional Pavlova, and the ‘‘Meringue Cake

or Fairy Pie’’ even had the passionfruit on top (Sawyer & Moore-Sims 1937, 209 and

210).These were the right forms but the wrong name; the reverse occurred, too. For

example, New Zealand research (Leach 1997, 2008) has turned up ‘‘Pavlova Cakes’’,

although small coffee and walnut meringues, originally contributed by Rose

Rutherford to the Christchurch Weekly Press on 5 September 1928, and ‘‘Pavlova

Cake’’, although of two crisp layers, contributed under the nom de plume ‘‘Festival’’

to the New Zealand Dairy Exporter annual (1929).

Leading off versions with both recognisable name and form, Mrs W.H. (Laurina)

Stevens contributed a ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ to the Rangiora Mother’s Union cookery book

(Anon. 1933). The ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ in broadcasting dynamo Aunt Daisy’s column in

the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly (8 March 1934) was contributed by ‘‘Successful

Pavlova-Maker’’, who had ‘‘made the Pavlova cake for a long time . . .’’ Daisy

observed that it was ‘‘very nearly a meringue cake’’ (quoted in Leach 2008, 75). The

strongest representation in the 1930s was then in New Zealand community books.

However, the name was still not quite right: ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ now sounds

incongruous (Hillier 2002). In addition, in the 1930s, the great majority were baked

in a cake tin rather than on a flat tray, which eventually became standard (Leach

2008, 86).

The earliest documented Australian candidates appeared in two Red Cross,

war-time, fund-raising books in 1940. Miss Elizabeth Laidlaw and Mrs B. Lee

Archer submitted separate recipes for ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ to 275 choice recipes in

Hamilton (Victoria) (Westacott and Lowenstern 1940, 41), and Ethel Ward

included similar recipes for ‘‘Marshmallow Meringue’’ and ‘‘Pavlova’’ in The

Empire cookery book from Adelaide (Wald 1940, 77 and 79). Laidlaw’s recipe does

not bother to mention any topping, suggesting that the Pavlova was already well

known in her circle.

These are still only snatches of the story. Adjudicating a winner depends on

establishing clear criteria, and the degree of variation in name and composition

cannot be over-stressed. Just to take 17 recipes published specifically as ‘‘Pavlova

Cake’’ or ‘‘Pavlova’’ between 1935 and 1944, they called for: two egg-whites (one

recipe), three (six recipes), four (nine recipes) and five (one recipe). The sugar

content ranged (with higher proportions making the meringue crisper), for the four-

egg versions: 1 cup (four recipes), 4 tbsp (one recipe), 8 tbsp (two recipes) and 8 oz

(two recipes). The sugar quantities for the three-egg Pavlovas were 3�4 oz (two

recipes), 7�8 oz (one recipe), 9 oz (one recipe), 6 level tbsp (one recipe) and 1

medium cup (one recipe). Vinegar was more popular (16 recipes) than cornflour (10

recipes).



This enormous variety of practical experience helps account for claims on behalf

of individual inventors. A member of the Wellington Ballet Company recalled many

years later that one of the city’s chefs presented a Pavlova to dancer Anna Pavlova

when she toured New Zealand in 1926 (Leach 2008, 35�36). Likewise, the chef at theEsplanade Hotel in Perth, Western Australia, Herbert Sachse, told a journalist that

either the hotel manager or owner gave the name to the meringue cake he developed

in 1935 (Schmitt 1973). Such traditions presumably have some basis in fact, not

despite but because of the collaborative process. Cooks invented the Pavlova, broadly

conceived, all the time.

Not only cooks were involved in the creation, for eaters also evaluated, selected

and named. A discussion of the serving of the Pavlova � the platform for the

feedback loop of eaters praising cooks, who rewarded eaters, and so on � precedes anexplanation of the creation of a definite entity.

Serving meringue

An enduring myth was that the secret of the often-boasted ‘‘marshmallow’’ centre �highlighted in early Australian titles � was the addition of vinegar and/or cornflour

(for example, Sinclair 1970, 170). Perth chef Bert Sachse added these ingredients in

1935 because: ‘‘I set out to create something that could have a crunchy top andwould cut like marshmallow’’ (Schmitt 1973).

However, soft centres are intrinsically the ‘‘problem of large meringues’’

(Davidson 1999, 497), because the foam composition acts as an insulator, protecting

the centre from cooking. In the pre-Pavlova era, even little meringues were typically

hollowed out with a teaspoon, dried further in the oven, filled with whipped cream

(perhaps flavoured), and two joined and then displayed in a neat stack (for example,

MacLurcan 1905, 341�342). Yet Mrs MacLurcan also advised, without amplifica-

tion: ‘‘the meringues may be made larger, and no filling will be then needed’’ (1905,355), presumably because of the soft centre. The ‘‘marshmallow’’ smacks of a

compromise that was later rationalised. The initial motivation was probably further

streamlining of the finicky cooking of grand households. Besides, large meringues

slotted into new social uses.

For Eliza Acton, a conical stack of little, paired meringues afforded ‘‘a second

course dish of elegant appearance, and they are equally ornamental to breakfasts or

suppers of ceremony’’ (1868, 550�551). That is, the meringues were displayed among

a dozen or so dishes in the second tableau of the prevailing service a la francaise.Later, in the Antipodes, the large cake still suited relatively formal serving, since was

it was sticky, creamy and falling to pieces and so required a plate and eating

implement. Its lavishness could also still jostle for attention among other cakes and

biscuits, Leach arguing that ‘‘a blank canvas of fifty square inches (314 cm2) of

cream’’ invites decoration (2008, 68).

With full-time home-makers entertaining one another, the Pavlova started out as

a showpiece at women’s, relatively refined ‘‘at-home’’ afternoon teas. It then came

into its own at contributory dinners of wider social groups, including familycelebrations and civil occasions known by such expressions as ‘‘bring a plate’’ and

‘‘ladies, a plate’’. It was next granted pride of place at birthdays, weddings and

Christmases, so that Recipes and household hints from Grocers’ United Stores placed

‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ among its ‘‘Special Xmas Recipes’’ (Anon. 1948, 5). As such

204 M. Symons


festivities, it was a frothy antithesis to the customary dense, dark and long-lasting

fruit cake.Especially early on in New Zealand, a ‘‘Meringue Cake’’ or ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ was

generally placed in the ‘‘Large Cakes’’ section of books. With the decline of formal

afternoon teas, it became accepted as a dessert within the standard meal format.

Aunt Daisy’s favourite cookery book allocated the ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ to ‘‘Large Cakes’’

and the separate ‘‘Pavlova’’ to ‘‘Sweets � Cold’’ (Daisy 1954, 262 and 172). In

Australia, it was a dessert earlier, ranging across a ‘‘Fairy Pie’’ (Coronation cookery

book; Sawyer and Moore-Sims 1937), ‘‘Tempting Tart’’ (Simpson’s baking book 1940;

Anon. 1940) and ‘‘Pavlova Dessert’’ (Betty King’s cook book; King 194?). The

earliest Australian appearance as simple ‘‘Pavlova’’ went under ‘‘Cold Puddings’’

(Wald 1940, 77 and 79).

While war-rationing of eggs and cream cut the dish’s urban opportunities, it

rebounded during the post-war consumer boom as a showy dessert even at family

meals. Presumably reflecting a fashionably American acceptance of dessert cakes,

‘‘Banana Pavlova cake with fruit-salad sauce’’ was served on Monday evening in a

Hobart woman’s prize-winning, week-long menu plan in 1948 (Australian Women’s

Weekly cookery book; Anon. 1948?, 43). In its sheer extravagance, the Pavlova might

be considered a ‘‘New Look’’ dessert, equivalent to Christian Dior’s first dress

collection in 1947.

This brief history of uses can be read as a feminine cake’s steady infiltration of

less gendered occasions, a civilising action. Such observations shift the focus towards

the Pavlova’s more symbolic roles. In parallel with the refining of preparation, cooks

and users selected and reinforced a name and strong connotations. Social networks

across both countries experimented with ‘‘Meringue Cake’’, ‘‘Marshmallow Mer-

ingue’’ and ‘‘Fairy Pie’’, among those already mentioned, and eventually appro-

priated the glamour of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Part 2: constructing an identity

Social construction

In her book devoted to Pavlova variants in New Zealand, Leach affirms that recipes

‘‘are not created, but evolve’’. The analogy with natural evolution focuses attention,

she says, on such processes as ‘‘selection acting on variation . . . and adaptation to

changing environments’’ (2008, 27 and 158). The metaphor of the survival of the

fittest helps, but social creation involves human deliberation. Culinary mutations

have an intentional element. In particular, the process of naming becomes an

important selection mechanism. It can privilege some among numerous variations.

The endowing of meaning contributes further to the relative stability of favoured

forms.

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,

which together contribute to a distinct concept. In other words, by itself, the

reference to constant recipe evolution fails to explain the widespread impression that

there is one, real, meaningful Pavlova. Leach’s stress on the numerous contenders

(the ‘‘small coffee-walnut type’’, ‘‘four-plus-four type’’, ‘‘one-egg type’’, etc.) leaves



the reverse puzzle: why are some variants relatively fixed? The answer is social

construction.The process can be outlined by reference to Plato’s idealism. The ancient

philosopher extolled another reality to the extent of demoting this one to a flawed

copy. His Seventh letter uses the example of the circle, challenging the reader to

locate a real one (Plato 1973). Applying the same argument, the Pavlova has a name.

It has a written recipe, which prescribes its composition. It can have a pictorial

representation, too. Furthermore, almost every Australian and New Zealander has a

strong impression of the Pavlova in their head. But neither the name, recipe, visual

representation nor a person’s mental impression is the real Pavlova, which Plato

therefore places in an ideal realm. On some higher level, the Pavlova remains an

abstraction, only ever copied imperfectly by physical versions, which are lopsided or

too browned or two-layered or with nuts.

Social scientists have explained Plato’s world of forms with theories of social

construction, no-one more influentially than Emile Durkheim, who provides an

explicit rejoinder to the ancient philosopher’s ‘‘magnificent language’’ at the

end of The elementary forms of the religious life (Durkheim 1995, 438; originally

1912). According to Durkheim (1995, 434; developed in Durkheim 1960),

above the individual lies society, ‘‘a system of active forces’’, with its

‘‘conscience collective’’. This socially constructed knowledge can be metaphysically

convincing.No single person created the ideal Pavlova; rather, a ‘‘system of active forces’’ did

so, as numerous people experienced and communicated. The move from ‘‘Mer-

ingues’’, ‘‘Meringue Cake’’ and ‘‘Marshmallow Meringue’’ to the more rhetorical

‘‘Fairy Pie’’, ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’, ‘‘Pavlova’’ and eventually ‘‘Pav’’ left the illusion of one

true, Platonic Pavlova, which gained such social facticity that people called it an

‘‘icon’’ in the 1990s. Such a distinct form could seemingly only have had one birth,

and so had to belong ultimately to either Australia or New Zealand. This was the

‘‘intelligent design’’ fallacy that a describable, nameable form could not have

emerged out of complex interactions.

The title of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1966) The social construction

of reality might have over-sold the case, but its publication signalled the widespread

appreciation of the process. Mary Douglas’s explorations of the power of cultural

categories included ‘‘Deciphering a meal’’, in which she drew attention to the

authority of meal structures (1972, 67�69). As an illustration, Antipodeans would

be unsettled to find their beloved proprietary spread, Vegemite (a black and salty

product of spent brewer’s yeast), advertised as ‘‘A Food and a Drink’’. A drink?

Even more disconcertingly, it was originally ‘‘Obtainable from all Chemists and

Grocers’’. Chemists? Such classifications seem transgressive. Yet this is how

Vegemite was advertised in the New PWMU cookery book (Anon. 1929, 88).

Similarly, a dish called ‘‘Pavlova’’ disconcerts when collected under ‘‘biscuits’’ or

called a ‘‘Tempting Tart’’. Given that the category of cake was consumed outside

regular meals, ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ had to give way to simple ‘‘Pavlova’’ for it to

become a valid dessert.

The Pavlova was socially constructed in conjunction not only with ‘‘proper’’ meal

structures, but also with the other social realities of nations and femininity.

206 M. Symons


Modern daintiness

Before the Second World War, cookery books frequently employed ‘‘dainty’’ both as

adjective and noun, just as ‘‘delicacy’’ means both ‘‘fineness or intricacy of structure

or texture’’ and ‘‘a choice or expensive food’’. The Coronation cookery book (Sawyer

and Moore-Sims 1937) listed the proto-Pavlova, the ‘‘Fairy Pie’’, among ‘‘delectable

dainties’’. Sherrie A. Inness links the emergence of dainty dishes in the United States

in the early twentieth century to the ‘‘construction of femininity’’, suggesting that a

‘‘woman proved herself to be a lady by preparing dainty, genteel foods for everything

from bridge gatherings to tea parties’’ (Inness 2001, 53).While Antipodean cooks might have aspired to gentility, so that some such

leading figure as the governor’s wife supplied a prefatory recipe to many community

books, people choose foods for more reasons than merely demonstrating social

position (‘‘proved herself to be a lady’’).4 Among basic pressures towards daintiness

was increasingly sophisticated food marketing, as in this earlier explanation:

The great promoters of daintiness, which turned mere ‘‘feeding’’ into ‘‘dining’’, were themodern food companies. They could not make much sales progress with the rough tastesof workmen. However, they could coax housewives to adopt profitable frills. They couldpersuade shoppers to ask for highly-advertised embellishments like chocolate, desic-cated coconut, custard powder and jelly. They could convince women to accept a newrole as consumers. (Symons 2007, 160; originally 1982, 139)

Appealing to daintiness, sections of the food industry used prettily-decorated

cookery booklets to persuade housewives to use canisters of sugar, ovens and

beaters for lady-like afternoon teas and suppers.

A glorious symbol of cultured femininity in those days was the Russian ballerina,

Anna Pavlova (1881�1931). ‘‘Leave acrobatics to others, Anna’’, an early teacher had

admonished. ‘‘You must realize that your daintiness and fragility are your greatest

assets’’ (quoted in Smakov 1984, 4). Pavlova toured her company widely, including to

the furthest reaches of European colonisation, visiting four Australian and several

New Zealand centres between March and August 1926. She returned to Australia

between March and July 1929.

The National Library of Australia’s collection of theatre programmes indicates a

total of 18 ballets (mostly one act) and 55 divertissements, demonstrating a range of

ballet styles and techniques. Her fragility was exemplified in her most famous work,

‘‘Le cygne’’, choreographed for her by Michel Fokine to the music of Camille Saint-

Saens, and depicting the spirit ebbing from a dying swan. The cover of her souvenir

programmes on both tours carried her photograph, framed within a wreath, wearing

the swan’s feathery white costume. Her arms are crossed, her head to one side,

dancing on point, with the dress lifted at the back to become circular. This image is

readily associable with a fluffy, white round of meringue cake.

White cakes already symbolised femininity. As the Pavlova was being created,

Americans were upgrading their previous Bride’s Cake � ‘‘that ethereal structure of

white tender cake all iced and decorated with snowy frosting’’ � into their Wedding

Cake, while relegating the traditional fruit or Black Cake to the Groom’s Cake

(‘‘Crocker’’ 1950, 147). The white icing of wedding cakes had been associated with

virginal purity since Queen Victoria, and, during the 1950s, Antipodeans developed

the ‘‘softly feminine’’ curves possible with white ‘‘plastic’’ icing (Charsley 1992, 124�125 and 22�26).



The author of Anna Pavlova: Her life and art, Keith Money, is a New Zealander

and so first knew the ballerina’s name through ‘‘all that shattered meringue, and

thick cream, and weirdly transparent green slices of Chinese gooseberry! And a hint

of passionfruit � that was the trick’’. Money’s appreciation would deepen:

Only now do I understand that no chef could have struck a better balance for the subjectof his homage: a delicate and fragile thing, cool yet faintly exotic in appearance. Anattempt to take it apart leaves one with a disconcerting collapse of the whole. The sliversof meringue are like ice floes on the Neva . . . [the river of Pavlova’s birthplace, StPetersburg]. (Money 1982, 1)

Pavlova’s feminine image was frequently appropriated, as her husband-manager

Victor Dandre complained:

Trading interests, always eagerly on the look-out for anything that a gullible public willgreedily take up, made an extensive use of Pavlova’s name � ‘‘Pavlova Perfume’’,‘‘Pavlova Powder’’, ‘‘Pavlova Fashions for the year 1925’’, high ‘‘Pavlova boots’’ inAmerica, ‘‘Pavlova Ices’’ in London, ‘‘Pavlova Cigarettes’’. (1932, 190)

And she does not appear to have gained much income from product endorsement.

Her Sydney souvenir programme in 1926 contained glamorous advertisements for

wine, whisky, beer, hotels, motor vehicles, cruises to Japan, women’s stocking, hair

stylists, and a ‘‘Special Announcement’’ from chocolate manufacturers, Mac

Robertson:

By arrangement with [theatrical entrepreneurs] J.C. Williamson Ltd., Madam Pavlovawill autograph the covers of the Special Pavlova Boxes of de luxe Old Gold Chocolates.Obtainable at all Sweet Stores within the vicinity of this Theatre. (Anon. 1926, 9)

Presumably without permission, the Davis Gelatine company promoted a recipe for

a moulded ‘‘Pavlova’’ of four coloured layers of jelly (sap green, milk, orange and

cochineal). The Australian national dictionary credits the first use to a New Zealand

booklet, Davis dainty dishes, in 1927 (Ramson 1988, 466). Started in that country, the

Davis company nonetheless already boasted the British Empire’s largest gelatine

works at Botany (Sydney), and the recipe and its watercolour picture originated in

the Davis dainty dishes edition in Australia (Davis 1926). The company published its

Pavlova recipe and pretty depiction in many tens of thousands of booklets and

inserts. Like most commercial recipes, this failed to take off, but associated gelatine

use with dainty cooking.

The power of naming

Successful Antipodean cake and biscuit recipes from that period exhibit striking

features. The attraction might be an ingredient, so that desiccated coconut is

prevalent in early examples (Lamingtons, Illusions, Khaki Cake, Kentish Cake, and

more), and cornflakes became highly fashionable when launched on the local market

in the late 1920s (Cornflake Meringues and Afghans). A distinct form helped, too,

such as the modernistic, two-toned iced Neenish Tart. Cultural reproduction was

further supported by an evocative name. Many alluded to visual effects, such as

Peach Blossom Cake, Sunbeams, Peep Bos (raspberry jam showing through a crack),

Slugs, Yo Yos and the white, light Illusions. Dusky colouring and spiciness were

208 M. Symons


associated with West Indian Cake (also known as Red Indian Cake), Afghans and

Maori Kisses.

An arresting name helped, too, so that proper names replaced literal descriptions:

Louise Cake remained popular in New Zealand, while Australians forgot similar

recipes for Raspberry Short Cake/Slice (Symons 2008, 46). Likewise, the formulation

‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ steadily replaced ‘‘Meringue Cake’’ in the ratio of 1:1.5, 1:1.2 and1:0.7 in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.5 Eventually, one name would prevail. Such

Australian alternatives as ‘‘Large Meringue’’ and ‘‘Tempting Tart’’ dwindled until

the Green and gold from South Australia used the hybrid ‘‘Marshmallow Meringue

(Pavlova)’’ in the late 1950s (Anon. 1950s, 109). It is easy to imagine the process, as

one person corrected another along the lines: ‘‘Fairy Pie? � no, that’s a Pavlova’’.

As further evidence of strengthening identity, the early name ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’

followed a common recipe form of a qualifier (‘‘Pavlova’’) of a category (‘‘cake’’). In

other words, this was a particular variety of cake. Yet certain culinary items gain such

familiarity that they require only a single word, becoming generic in their own right �such as brawn, kedgeree and meringue. The seventh edition of the Edmonds cookery

book (around 1939) used simple ‘‘Pavlova’’, and Australians quickly settled on a

single noun, perhaps in association with earlier placement in the non-cake category

of cold desserts. Once the Pavlova became familiar, it could be modified to give Little

Pavlovas (1946), Raspberry Pavlova (1948), and so on � although publishers were

still insufficiently acquainted when they must have rendered a curly ‘‘v’’ as

‘‘Padalova’’ (Gill 1952, 75).The name was affectionately abbreviated to ‘‘Pav’’ in one or both countries by

1966 (Turner 1966, 173). The winner of even this element of the ‘‘still hotly debated’’

ownership dispute is unclear, since the witness was a New Zealander resident in

Australia, as a fellow lexicographer points out (Ramson 1993, 22). By now the dish

had become so familiar that Cooking with style in aid of the Wellington Free

Ambulance followed the ‘‘Pavlova Cake’’ recipe with an ‘‘Afterpav Cake (To use up

the egg yolks)’’ ([Marris] 1969, 80).

The converging upon and then playing around with a name contributed to the

Pavlova’s identity. No-one can proclaim, defend and give meaning to an ‘‘x’’ until it

has a name. Furthermore, naming affects physical actions and results, most

immediately because an accepted label encourages direct comparisons between

recipes. The large, single-layered meringue eventually sidelined the little, biscuity

Pavlova cakes of Rose Rutherford that appeared in at least six nationally circulated

New Zealand books through the 1930s (Leach 2008, 61). We can imagine such other

comments as ‘‘Why use six whites? � I only need three’’. Seemingly paradoxically, the

proliferation of recipes only sharpened the definition, given the weight of increased

popularity. Then, mass conformity released a more sophisticated experimentationthat can be termed playfulness (the ‘‘Afterpav Cake’’, and so on).

Success is further helped when names invite creation myths. Anzac Biscuits are

widely understood to have been sent to the Anzacs (members of the combined

Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) during the Great War. Recently this has

been termed a ‘‘myth’’. Yet the account is broadly correct, even if long-keeping,

rolled oats biscuits only gained ‘‘Anzac’’ in their title in 1919. Stories have circulated

to explain how Lamingtons (cubes of cake coated with cocoa icing and desiccated

coconut) were named after Baron Lamington, governor of Queensland (1896�1901).6

The title Kentish Cake (incorporating cocoa, coconut and finely chopped almonds)



implies traditional use in an English county, probably fallaciously. Recipes such as

the Pavlova, whose names imply creation myths, are striking examples of socially

constructed or ‘‘invented traditions’’ that can seem unrealistically time-honoured

(Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).In sum, numerous domestic cooks created the Pavlova in response to plentiful

raw materials, new kitchen technology, lively recipe exchange and to suit certain

social occasions, often being shown off at celebrations, when a dense fruit cake could

be trumped, and also in response to more purely cultural factors � notably a

distinctive, evocative and intriguing tag, which assisted the dish’s shaping,

standardisation and perpetuation. Commemorating an exciting Russian emigre,

the Pavlova was caught up in the construction of femininity, and then burdened with

an extra symbolic load when it was proclaimed a national dish � in two nations.

National confection

A core disciplinary challenge for culinary historians is establishing links between the

contents of recipe books and actual practices. Some indication that a recipe was

indeed in use comes from the frequency of its book appearances, and, presumably

more accurately, from the grubbiness of relevant pages. Collector Duncan Galletly

recorded the creases, stains and hand-written marks in 180 early New Zealand booksto provide a ‘‘use index’’ for cake and biscuit recipes (pers. comm.). He found that,

for example, cooks turned frequently to American recipes for Chinese Chews,

Buffalo Cake and Stuffed Monkeys (each scored 0.55 on his scale). Some local

inventions were often looked up, especially Louise Cake (0.37), Lamingtons (0.34),

Afghans (0.33) and Anzac Biscuits (0.31). Meringue Cake was among these (0.34), in

more use than Pavlova (0.30), although this was still above the average (0.24), and

the scores apply to books before 1950.

During the 1950s, the Pavlova became well recognised as a favourite in bothcountries. AVictorian rural newspaper, The Leader, affirmed that the ‘‘pavlova tart is

certainly one of the most popular of all fancy sweets’’ (Anon. mid-1950s?, 10). ‘‘In

New Zealand it is the hostess’s favourite dessert (and the guest’s too)’’, Helen M. Cox

explained in one of her first London cookery books (1956, 104�105). During the

1960s, people on both sides of the Tasman Sea elevated this national favourite to a

national creation. The Margaret Fulton cookbook observed ‘‘the famous Australian

Pavlova is to be enjoyed in places as far flung as San Francisco and Hong Kong’’

(Fulton 1968, 240). Its recognition also moved beyond cookery books. The creamyconcoction had been messy for shops to handle, but a food technologist at Massey

University in New Zealand published papers on commercial techniques for Pavlova

cake mix and frozen Pavlova cakes (Beswick 1968, 1969).

The thorough Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook, selling more than 800,000

copies, devoted an entire chapter in 1970, detailing such tricks as removing the

meringue cleanly from a tray. As well as the ‘‘Classic Pavlova’’ of three egg-whites

and one cup of sugar, recipes included ‘‘One-Egg Pavlova’’, ‘‘Easy Two-Egg

Pavlova’’, ‘‘Stored heat Pavlova’’ and ‘‘Marshmallow Pavlova’’, along with a pageof ‘‘Fillings for Pavlovas’’ (Sinclair 1970, 170�174).

Male writers in the general media now reinforced the Pavlova’s national status.

The Australian weekly magazine, The Bulletin (6 November 1971, 58), reported that

the House of Pavlova in Victoria was ‘‘equipped with 32 ovens each capable of

210 M. Symons


turning out eight pavlovas a day’’, and confirmed that ‘‘in the air, Qantas [Australia’s

national carrier] passengers spoon through several a day’’. Hugh Schmitt’s article on

Perth chef Bert Sachse appeared in Woman’s Day in 1973.

This was the era of jet travel, when numerous Australians and New Zealandersspent time in Britain and elsewhere, and confronted their national identity and

associated food peculiarities, not least Vegemite and Pavlova. Visiting the Harrods

food hall in London in 1971, Sydney journalist Ross Campbell came across a sign,

‘‘Pavlova Cake � 20 p a slice’’, and reported in the Bulletin that ‘‘a distinctive

Australian contribution to cuisine, had been officially recognized as posh’’ (Camp-

bell 1971, 13). Yet the sign went on: ‘‘Pavlova Cake was created in New Zealand as a

tribute to the dancer Anna Pavlova’’. Irritated by the mis-attribution and also the

‘‘cake’’ label, Campbell wrote to the manager, complaining that ‘‘the Pavlova �‘Pavlova Cake’ � was believed in Australia to be an indigenous creation’’, and was

normally topped with passionfruit. The store’s response was ‘‘conciliatory’’, saying

that they had removed the placard, but noting that sales had trebled when they

switched from passionfruit to strawberries (Campbell 1971, 13�14).

Social commentator (and later British MP) Austin Mitchell pandered to New

Zealand’s ‘‘one major preoccupation: New Zealand’’ (1972, 11) with his title The

half-gallon quarter-acre Pavlova paradise (Mitchell 1972). Mitchell’s book barely

mentions the Pavlova; yet the title was so resonant that a new edition and televisionseries 30 years later was sharpened to Pavlova paradise revisited in 2002. By then, the

Pavlova had been borrowed for a lexicographers’ festschrift, Of Pavlova, poetry and

paradigms: Essays in honour of Harry Orsman (Bauer and Franzen 1993).

The dish came to national prominence as Antipodeans abandoned their ‘‘cultural

cringe’’, referring to the way intellectuals submitted to ‘‘the intimidating mass of

Anglo-Saxon culture’’ (Phillips 1950). Just as the young Queen Elizabeth’s Royal

Tour of 1953�1954 aroused pride in the British Empire, writers and artists departed

for London. Nationalism arose in the 1960s as a reaction to the ‘‘Americanisation’’of television sitcoms and the Vietnam War. Rather than the jingoism that represses

internal differences, this was the less embarrassing liberation of self-expression, and

remained somewhat ironic.

Ironic nationalism

‘‘The soldier who falls defending his flag certainly does not believe that he has

sacrificed himself to a piece of cloth’’, observes Durkheim (1995), 229). Flagsembody national virtues only through a mighty suspension of disbelief. To achieve

such a flagrant social construction, leaders have installed flags on buildings, in public

halls and behind themselves, and led the saluting and singing, until the slightest

misuse seems a desecration. Such triumphalism, faith and obedience matched the

authoritarians’ will to power and will to believe. Meanwhile, on the other side of the

culture wars, and speaking with equal generality, liberals relied more on empiricism,

debate and theories of social construction. They also held their love for their nation

at a safe distance through irony.As much as any book, Donald Horne’s The lucky country announced a new

national self-consciousness, but its title was ironic: ‘‘Australia is a lucky country run

mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’’ (1964, 209). Similarly, patriotic

emotions were stirred by the humorous exaggeration of stock characteristics, as when



John O’Grady adopted an immigrant persona ‘‘Nino Culotta’’ to write They’re a

weird mob (1957). The new nationalism became even more noticeable with the

government-supported movie industry, which paraded the cockiness of young men in

such titles as Stork (1971) and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), only

tempered when an earlier generation of young women showed up in Picnic at

Hanging Rock (1975) and My Brilliant Career (1979) (see O’Regan 2002 for details of

all four movies).Especially during its greatest public prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, the

Pavlova became a gently subversive national symbol � not merely more grounded,

generous and peaceful than any flag, but also more light-hearted. Recall the

journalists’ mock defences, such as Campbell’s, of a sweet ‘‘officially recognized as

posh’’ and proclamations, such as Mitchell’s, of a ‘‘Pavlova paradise’’. Satirist Barry

Humphreys divided the world into the ‘‘Pavs and Pav-nots’’, lamenting in Dame

Edna’s coffee table book: ‘‘Many young lasses couldn’t run up . . . a decent Pavlova

these days’’ (quoted in Ramson 1988, 466). Even the long list of eventual Pavlova

variants, such as the mini-Pavlova, one-egg, electric frypan, microwave, roll and Snax

Pavlovas, hint at amused affection.

This need for a more ironic national emblem can be set against a new revolution

in the food supply, and the concurrent re-construction of the nation and of gender

roles. Early in the century, capital had moved into food distribution on an eventually

national basis, with industrial products aimed at households. By contrast to this

nation-building and home-building, the post-war consumer boom globalised

production and also individualised consumption. Displacing not only domesticgardens and stores, but now also home cooking, the manufactured cornucopia

liberated the mass kitchen of iron stoves and sugar canisters, admitting women into

the paid workforce, and men into the previously female domain.

Marketing a vast range of ready-made meals, as well as fast food options outside

the home, multinational food corporations further eroded national boundaries by

offering simulacra of French, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cuisine.

As well, the food industry advertised takeaways, snacks, and drinks as providing

health, style and pleasure benefits for individuals (Symons 2006b). Overall, this

encouraged a distinctly postmodern mentality (for example, Symons 2009).

The new nationalism could be hyper-real, as when McDonald’s flew its own logo

alongside the appropriate nation’s flag, or it could employ such distancing devices as

nostalgia and irony. Against the postmodern cacophony of brand-names and logos,

the Pavlova recalled the earlier, housewifely stage of the industrial food supply.

Contrasting markedly with the even earlier, masculine meat pies, damper and billy

tea, this feminine food icon harked back to the disappearing full-time home-makers �people’s mothers and grandmothers.

Trumpeting the discovery of a national dish in an increasingly global environ-

ment, both nations discovered the other, and the ensuing struggle over ownership

was largely tongue-in-cheek. A food writer reported that the long ‘‘simmering’’ battle

over rightful national ownership flared into a ‘‘full diplomatic row’’ in 1985 after a

group in Western Samoa asked both the Australian and New Zealand High

Commissioners to nominate a national dish for a fund-raising evening; ‘‘the fury

resounded in the national press of both countries’’ (Burton 1991, 67).

The suitability of this heart-felt creation of modern cooks to be celebrated within

postmodernity was affirmed by the dish’s relative eclipse under Australia’s doggedly

212 M. Symons


right-wing prime minister John Howard from 1996 until 2007. The sweet delicacy

seemed less amusing in the flag-waving, resentful national mood, when Howard

joined the ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ to invade Iraq, and when joking literally became

a criminal offence.7 Meanwhile, New Zealanders still had a Labour government andthey still had their larger and indifferent neighbour, so they kept up the ‘‘Pavlova

wars’’. In her years of researching and lecturing on the Pavlova, Leach has accepted

that ‘‘the periodic skirmishes provide an excellent opportunity for redressing the

imbalances created by sports encounters, and generating a comfortable feeling of

national identity’’ (2008, 29).

One Pavlova or two?

Scholars now demystify nations as socially constructed or ‘‘imagined’’ communities,

whose borders have appeared more settled and cultures more cohesive than in reality(for example, Anderson 1991). Like the Pavlova, nations have been created out of

complex social, cultural and environmental interactions, and, with sufficient flag-

waving, have acquired a deceptive conventionality. The force of political will can

make Australians and New Zealanders think their nations are distinct, and forget

that they share much more than colonial origins, the Anzac legend and virtually

indistinguishable flags.

They have eaten much the same, and their most commonly proclaimed national

dishes, differentiated by fruit topping, epitomise a history of recipe swapping. ASydney reader contributed a ‘‘Meringue Cake’’ to the Ideal fundraiser in Wellington

in 1929, while a cook called ‘‘Rewa’’ of Rongotai, New Zealand, contributed a

‘‘Meringue Cake’’ to the Australian Woman’s Mirror on 2 April 1935. The speed of

this exchange provides a rough measure of culinary and thus cultural cohesion. A

comparison of earliest known versions of three dozen cakes and biscuits shows

migration can be fast (within a year or two), although admittedly sometimes slower.

Oddly, recipe migration appears to have been faster from the relative periphery

(New Zealand) to the relative centre (Australia). Travellers would presumably havecarried recipe finds at equivalent speeds both ways across the Tasman. However,

while magazines tended to be distributed from the larger to the smaller country, their

recipes often moved against that flow. For example, one in seven readers’ recipes

published in the Australian Woman’s Mirror in the 1930s was sent from New

Zealand.

The thorough exchange of Pavlova recipes raises questions of whether the two

nations’ cuisines could ever be satisfactorily studied separately. Moreover, the

Pavlova might seem trivial, a sweet puff of wind � yet it could also be a powerfulunifying force. Its collective creation suggests that these two nations are more like

one.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Helen Leach and other members of the team, along with Duncan Galletly, MarionMaddox and this journal’s anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Cookery books are presented chronologically after the references.



2. The use of cookery books as social and culinary indicators (particularly, in my case, of theshift from modernity to postmodernity) was supported by the Marsden Fund of the RoyalSociety of New Zealand from 2005 until 2008.

3. The National Library of Australia dates the book as 1924?; it contains a testimonial fromopera singer Nellie Melba, dated 15 August 1922.

4. The corollary would be that other women chose nasty or just plain food to show off theirinferiority.

5. Duncan Galletly, personal communication. Helen Leach provides another set of ratiosrestricted to her ‘‘type IIIA’’ recipes, closest to the conventional Pavlova: 1:2.25 (1930s),1:0.86 (1940s), and 1:0.22 (1950s).

6. Lady Lamington’s unpublished memoirs credit their French chef Armand Galland fordevising them for unexpected guests in either Toowoomba or Brisbane between April 1900and June 1901 (Dr Katie McConnel, Curator, Old Government House, Brisbane, personalcommunication).

7. Signs throughout Sydney airport stated: ‘‘Joking about aviation safety and security is . . .taken seriously and may lead to;/Being denied the right to fly; or/Criminal Prosecution/Let’s Keep Sydney Airport Safe�Secure’’ (author’s photograph, Monday 5 January 2007).

Notes on contributors

Michael Symons has been a journalist and restaurateur, instigated the Symposiums ofAustralian Gastronomy in 1984, and gained a PhD in the ‘‘sociology of cuisine’’ in 1991. He isthe author of One continuous picnic: A history of eating in Australia (1982, Duck Press and2007, Melbourne University Press), The shared table: Ideas for Australian cuisine (1993,AGPS) and The pudding that took a thousand cooks (1998, Viking; republished in 2000 as Ahistory of cooks and cooking, University of Illinois Press).

References

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Anon. 1926. Anna Pavlova: Her Majesty’s Theatre [Programme for week commencing SaturdayApril 24th, 1926]. Sydney: J.C. Williamson Ltd.

Bauer, L., and C. Franzen. 1993. Of Pavlova, poetry and paradigms: Essays in honour of HarryOrsman. Wellington: Victoria University Press.

Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. 1966. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociologyof knowledge. New York: Doubleday.

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Cookery books (arranged chronologically)

Beeton, Mrs Isabella. 1861. The book of household management. London: S.O. Beeton.Acton, Eliza. 1868. Modern cookery, for private families, etc. London: Longmans, Green,

Reader, and Dyer.Pearson, Miss [Margaret J.]. 1889. Cookery recipes for the people. 2nd ed. Melbourne:

Australasian-American Trading Company.Rawson, Mrs Lance. 1895. The Australian enquiry book of household and general information:

A practical guide for the cottage, villa, and bush home. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Pater & Knapton.Wicken, H.F. 1898. The Kingswood cookery book. 4th ed. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.Maclurcan, Hannah. 1905. Mrs Maclurcan’s cookery book: A collection of practical recipes

specially suitable for Australia. 6th ed. Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide & Brisbane: GeorgeRobertson.

Rutledge, Mrs Forster. 1906. The Goulburn cookery book. 3rd ed. Sydney: W.C. Penfold.Rawson, Mrs Lance. 1907. The Antipodean cookery book and kitchen companion. 5th ed.

Melbourne: George Robertson.Anon. c. 1908. Colonial everyday cookery. 5th ed. Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs.Anon. 1911. The Kookaburra cookery book of culinary and household recipes and hints.

Adelaide: Lady Victoria Buxton Girls’ Club.Futter, Emily. c. 1922. Australian home cookery. Sydney: George B. Philip, The Oak Tree Press.Anon. 1924. Green and gold cookery book: Containing many good and proved recipes. 2nd ed.

Adelaide: Combined Congregational and Baptist Churches of South Australia in aid ofKing’s College Fund.

Davis Gelatine. 1926. Davis dainty dishes. 5th ed. Sydney: Davis Gelatine (Aust.) Limited.Futter, Emily. 1927?. Home cookery for New Zealand. Auckland: Whitcombe & Tombs.Anon. 1929. The New PWMU cookery book: Compiled and issued by the Presbyterian Women’s

Missionary Union of Victoria. Melbourne: Brown, Prior & Co.NZ Dairy Exporter annual. 1929. October 10. Wellington: Wellington Publishing.Anon. c. 1932. The Barossa cookery book: 1000 selected recipes, from a district celebrated

throughout Australia for the excellent of its cookery: Every recipe of proved merit and signedas such by the donors. Tanunda, South Australia: Tanunda Soldiers’ Memorial Institute.

Anon. 1933. Rangiora Mothers’ Union cookery book of tried and tested recipes. Rangiora:Wilson Brothers.

Daisy, Aunt [Maud Basham]. 1933��1934?. ‘‘Aunt Daisy’’ cookery book: Containing over 700recipes and hints. Auckland: Mrs D. Basham.

Daisy, Aunt [Maud Basham]. 1934. The NZ ‘‘Daisy Chain’’ cookery book: Containing over 800recipes and hints. Wellington: Publisher.

216 M. Symons


Sawyer, Jessie, and Sara Moore-Sims. 1937. Coronation cookery book. No place: CountryWomen’s Association of NSW.

Anon. c. 1939. Edmonds ‘‘Sure to Rise’’ cookery book. 7th ed. Christchurch: Whitcombe &Tombs Ltd.

Anon. 1940. Simpson’s baking book 1940. Brisbane: Simpson Bros.Wald, Ethel. 1940. The Empire cookery book: Containing 500 selected choice recipes. Adelaide:

SA Red Cross Society and Royal Naval Friendly Union.Westacott, Miss G., and Mrs Ronald Lowenstern. 1940. 275 choice recipes: In aid of Hamilton

Red Cross funds. Hamilton, Vic.: no publisher.‘‘King, Betty’’. 194?. Betty King’s cook book: An enlarged up-to-the-minute edition of the

famous Copha recipe book. Sydney: World Brands Pty. Ltd.Anon. 1948. [Approved] Recipes and household hints. Christchurch: GUS [Grocers’ United

Stores].Anon. 1948?. The Australian Women’s Weekly cookery book: Prize recipes from our £2,000

cookery contest. Sydney: Consolidated Press.‘‘Crocker, Betty’’. 1950. Betty Crocker’s picture cook book. New York: McGraw-Hill &

General Mills.Gill, Elsie. 1952. New Australian jubilee cookery book. 2nd ed. Murwillumbah, NSW: Tweed

Newspapers.Anon. 1950s?. Green and gold cookery book: Containing many good and proved recipes,

contributed by experienced housewives and cookery experts. 27th ed. Adelaide: Rigby[Combined Congregational and Baptist Churches of South Australia in aid of King’sCollege Fund].

Anon. mid-1950s?. Selected recipes from The Leader: Another Spare Corner book. Melbourne:David Syme.

Daisy, Aunt [Maud Basham]. 1954. Aunt Daisy’s favourite cookery book: Over 1800 favouriterecipes. Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs. (1st ed. 1952.)

Cox, Helen. 1956. Time saving cooking. London: Odhams Press.Fulton, Margaret. 1968. The Margaret Fulton cookbook. Dee Why West, NSW: Paul Hamlyn.[Marris, Mrs. E.C.]. 1969. Cooking with style. Wellington: Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Wellington

Free Ambulance Service.Sinclair, Ellen, ed. 1970. Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook. Sydney: Golden Press.Rombaeur, Irma S., Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. 1999. Joy of cooking.

London: Simon & Schuster.

