The 50 Greatest Dishes of the World
Page 17
By the first decades of the 20th century, meringue concoctions like the schaum torte, began to appear on menus around America, but with Americanised names such as kiss cake, fruit meringue and cream meringue.
Meanwhile, says Annabelle, the British were making elegant, large-scale meringue cakes. Just like the pavlova, these were topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. One of the dishes was Portman Meringue, named after a viscount in the aristocratic Portman family.
The recipe was published in 1909, The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie, some twenty years before Anna Pavlova visited the Antipodes. Indeed, the recipe stems from a period between 1841 and 1897. (There were similar recipes at the time, says Annabelle, including one called Strawberries Meringue.)
‘It’s identical to a pavlova in every way. It tells us that this type of meringue dessert was now trending in the northern hemisphere. It was more than a cake, it was vogue – a sign of domestic superiority, social sophistication and haute-table fashion.’
*
Their research has led them back even further, to the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg dynasty and the politics of that period. ‘The Habsburgs,’ says Annabelle, ‘had a fascination for all things Spanish. It was a romantic association with the origins of their family-lineage. And what emerges in cookbooks of that period, are hundreds of “Spanische” titled recipes. The Spanische windtorte is just one of these themed dishes.’ The windtorte is a cylinder of meringue filled with cream and fruit and topped with a meringue ‘lid’. It can be garnished with flowers.
‘In German, windtorte means “wind-cake”, a reference to driving wind into meringue batter – in other words, aerating the mixture. It is not, as some have suggested, a reference to windflower, a species of anemone. Windflower is toxic and should never be used in cookery.’
From the 1780s, Spanische-wind related recipes appear in cookery books, all of them sophisticated meringue dainties of some description. By the 1790s a glut of Spanische windtorte recipes were published in Germanic cookery books.
*
In the 1880s, housewives in Australia and New Zealand were able to buy a product called Duryea Maizena, an early name for cornflour or cornstarch. Says Annabelle: ‘Food industrialists like William Duryea quickly recognised the value of publishing corporate recipe booklets which promoted their brand directly to cooks and housewives alike.
‘When it comes to a corporate cookery book which included references to meringue tarts and meringue tourte, the first and earliest example Dr Wood and I came across was Recipes for the Use of Duryeta’s Maizena: An Article of Food that Received Two Prize Medals At The International Exhibition, London, 1862. It was published in New York in 1864.’
The significance of Duryea’s recipe book is twofold. First, it reveals the names of several fashionable 1860s meringue dainties including Maizena floating islands (baked meringues on custard), Maizena meringues, Maizena meringue tarts, Meringues à la crème, and under the heading ‘Gateaux et Patisserie au Maizena’ (Cakes And Pastries from Maizena) are Meringues au chocolat and Tourte meringues (known to be a large-scale meringue torte topped with whipped cream and fruits).
Second, it shows that the addition of cornflour to meringue recipes is not an independent antipodean innovation, as has been suggested by some. Rather, it was one of several well-known meringue formulas published and promoted by northern hemisphere food industrialists during the 19th century.
With this in mind, the claims are clearly wrong that Australian or New Zealand home cooks advanced meringue mixtures by incorporating cornflour. It is more likely that commercial recipes such as Duryea’s Maizena were available in the southern hemisphere, and that cornflour-inclusive meringue recipes reached Australian and New Zealand via commercial booklets and product packaging recipes.
Annabelle says: ‘The first-known “Pavlova Cake” recipe, published in New Zealand in October 1929, contained a ration of cornflour. This gives us a vital clue as to its true origins – which we will disclose in our book. The second published recipe for a pavlova cake in 1933 also contains a cornflour component, but by 1934 pavlova cake recipes often contained none.’
She adds:
‘I would like to make one slightly snarky point, if I may, with regard to the Wellington legend. Dr Wood and I have discovered many pavlova-named desserts and dishes dating between 1911 and 1930. Without exception, we can identify each of their chef-authors or venues of creation. They are the product of haute cuisine or commercial agreements, and their presence in the culinary dialogue corresponds with the movements of Anna Pavlova.
‘If there had indeed been a Wellington “invention” in 1926, why was there was no reporting or documentation of the dish? Why can we not find a Kiwi chef-candidate to claim it? And why did it take until 1929 for the first recipe to emerge? The answer, we believe, is that this dessert was not a Kiwi innovation.’
She continues: ‘You might be interested to know that a legend exists in Australia, that the pavlova was invented in Melbourne in 1926 by a chef at the Menzies Hotel – and unlike Wellington’s claim, there is some anecdotal evidence which supports the production of at least one Anna Pavlova-homage dish on menus at the Menzies.’
She and Dr Wood can confirm that New Zealand has the first recorded ‘Pavlova Cake’ recipe in a publication (1929) – ‘but this does not mean that it is a Kiwi creation. To us, this recipe appears to have just landed in New Zealand and without proof of a creator or a venue of creation, the recipe is unlikely to have birthed from New Zealand’s loins in 1929 – because in that year, Anna Pavlova only toured Australia.
‘I must stress again though, that the pavlova is merely a rebranding of a very popular northern hemisphere dainty, and given we have now discovered dozens of never-before documented, pavlova-named desserts and dishes, there is the very real possibility, that the pavlova belongs to neither New Zealand or Australia. Indeed, it looks to us, as though this cake was born elsewhere.’
Significantly, their evidence suggests that large meringue cakes topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit existed in Australia and New Zealand much earlier than that first 1929 ‘Pavlova Cake’ recipe, and that the rise in popularity of the pavlova-style presentations in the southern hemisphere, follows the culinary trends already in progress in the northern hemisphere.
Typically, northern hemisphere recipes arrived in Australia and New Zealand via cookery books, newspapers, promotional ephemera and through culinary skill and cultural exchanges between cooks or housewives. Ocean liners and the age of syndicated media also allowed recipes to travel quickly from one side of the globe to the other, and we know that the pavlova proto-type was present in Australia, well before it had that name.
*
Does she ever get sick of pavlova?
‘I never get sick of researching the pavlova, pavlova-named dishes, pavlova-like dishes, the chefs who created them or the venues of their creation. Large scale meringue cakes in particular, are not just dishes, rather, artifacts with geopolitical, technological and societal associations. Likewise, Anna Pavlova-food homages are windows into celebrity, culture, food-ways, industry, haute cuisine and the ending of Edwardian-era plenty, as the privations of Great War loomed. It is a mistake to look at a dish’s evolution, separate to history – and for that reason the genre of pavlovas deserve full chronicling.
‘Since beginning this project, I have become absolutely enchanted by olde-worlde cookery and I must confess, I also love attempting these recipes. Whether it’s an 18th century Spanische Wind dainty, or the Davis Gelatine “Pavlova” recipe (a colourful, four layer jelly published first in Australia in 1926) – I can’t resist the challenge and when you go to the trouble of recreating these gorgeous old recipes, you learn a lot.
‘Once I hand-beat egg whites and sugar for 45 minutes with two forks bound together, because I wanted to know how labour intensive and time consuming meringue-making must have been before the advent of rotary beaters. Turns out – aerating meringue that way is hard. My
froth thickened, but never fully stiffened. It was still usable though, and when spread on wafers and baked, I understood how special a dish like that would have been in the 16th century.’
Annabelle always samples the historic cakes that she bakes, and tends to give away the rest of the cake for others to ‘review’. She says: ‘One of my favourite things, is hearing, “That pavlova was amazing.”
‘It’s my cue to cheekily jump in and reply, “Thank you, but it wasn’t a pavlova … because pavlovas weren’t around in the 1840s.”’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dear reader, I am extremely grateful to you for taking the time to dip into The 50 Greatest Dishes of the World. You could have picked another book to read at this very moment. Yet you chose this one. Thank you, sincerely.
Many have contributed to the creation of this little feast. Fine chefs and cooks, gifted authors and journalists, ever-hungry gourmets and gourmands: each has added a touch of this or a splash of that.
At Icon Books, Duncan Heath has been encouraging and supportive. He remained confident that one day – eventually – the manuscript would arrive. He was right, as you can see. My editor Ellen Conlon has been brilliant and wise, and it has been an honour to work with her.
Thanks to Gavin Morris, the designer, Sara Bryant, who was tasked with reading the proofs and correcting errors, and Victoria Reed, who handled the publicity.
Charlie Brotherstone, as excellent a literary agent as he is a lunch companion, is sick of me thanking him. But I shall do so nevertheless.
Ken Hom has guided me through the food of China and South-east Asia (kindly providing a gorgeous recipe for Peking Duck). Francesco Mazzei, chef-patron of Sartoria in London’s Savile Row, has been my Italian inspiration. Those grand chefs from France, Raymond Blanc and Michel Roux, have helped me to appreciate fully the joys of their national cuisine.
Three decades after we first met, Marco Pierre White remains a close friend and mentor, always willing to assist as I write about food. While I worked on this book, he invited me to stay at his cosy hotel, Rudloe Arms in Wiltshire, and fed me incredibly well.
Adam Byatt is chef-patron of Trinity, in Clapham, Southwest London. For those who live north of the Thames, Trinity is the reason to cross the river. Adam has been a rich source of know-how and culinary cleverness.
I am also indebted to Isabelle Augier for her help with caviar. And thank you so much, Armen Petrossian, for your valuable insight into the delicacy.
Regarding beef Wellington, Lucinda Ebersole sent old recipes. Meanwhile, Stephen Henry, the esteemed executive chef at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, scoured the hotel’s archives. Thank you for whooshing me back to the golden age of gastronomy.
Annabelle Utrecht was also generous with her time, explaining to me the extraordinary story of pavlova. Annabelle, I can’t wait to read your book. To Mississippi master-cook Melissa Magnuson, I plead Oliver Twist-style – please, please may I have some more gumbo?
I must also thank Diane Sequeira for curry advice, and for her chicken curry recipe. Caroline and Emily Maddick put me up at their beautiful villa in Mallorca, where I could make gazpacho and paella, drink and eat them … and write about them for this book. Roger Pizey, the renowned pastry chef, has frequently helped answer my questions about desserts and puddings. Cheers Rog. Oh, and Craig, Sarah and Georgina Cooper – thank you, and what great timing!
Thank you to the four special people who have been there throughout, putting up with me and my cooking: Louise, Charlie, Billy and Daisy. Let’s go for lunch.