Passage V

As Light as Pavlova

In the 1920s, Anna Pavlova, Russia's premier ballerina, toured Australia and New Zealand, firing the imaginations of dancers, patrons of ballet, and chefs who found inspiration. Few doubt that the meringue dessert known as the pavlova, was created to honor the world-famous dancer. Both Australia and New Zealand, likewise, lay claim to being first to celebrate their luminous costumes and light-footed dancing with puffy clouds of meringue.

In 1935, Chef Herbert Sachse of the Hotel Esplanade in Perth, Australia, commemorated Pavlova ' s tour with a dessert he hoped would be as ethereal and delicate as her movements onstage. He started by making a marshmallow-like base of fluffy meringue, it's a blend of whipped egg whites and sugar. He filled the sunken center of the baked meringue with mounds of whipped cream, swirled to suggest a spinning ballerina. Because Pavlova ' s tutu had been speckled with green silk roses, he covered the cream with sliced kiwifruit. To the hotel guests to whom Sachse first served this delicacy, he went, "It is as light as Pavlova."

New Zealanders, however, believe that a dessert was served, very similar to Sachse's confection also in honor of Anna Pavlova, at a hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, as early as I926. Sachse himself said that his own meringue dessert was a fanciful adaptation of a recipe for " meringue cake" that he had found in a magazine. That recipe had been contributed by "Rewa, a woman from New Zealand."(72)

The many variations of the dessert have allowed both countries to call one of their own early recipes as 'the original pavlova." But there were dozens of recipes for pavlova in New Zealand cookbooks by 1940, the year a pavlova recipe first appeared in an Australian cookbook. Most culinary historians—and even the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary—attribute the original pavlova to New Zealand. Consequently, this artistic dessert generously adorns the national cuisine of both countries.