suzettemarnier
“The most recent research, by Dr. Andrew Paul Wood and Annabelle Utrecht (a New Zealander and an Australian, respectively), suggests that the true pavlova has roots in Germany and America. Last year, after a solid two years of digging through old recipes, the duo told the Australian website Good Food that they had found somewhere over 150 recipes for meringue-based cakes that look an awful lot like pavlova, all published before Anna Pavlova even arrived down under in 1926!
One of the first pavlova-like recipes Wood and Utrecht found is for a meringue, cream, and fruit torte called the Spanische Windtorte, much loved by the Austrian Habsburgs of the 18th century. They also found similar torte recipes among those brought to America by the German immigrants who settled in the Midwest. Particularly with the invention of the hand-cranked egg beater in the late 1800s, these and other meringue recipes seem to have become hugely popular among American housewives.
Wood and Utrecht believe the pavlova recipe as we know it may have traveled to Australia and New Zealand on the back of a cornstarch box. Unlike French meringue cookies, pavlova meringue often incorporates cornstarch, which gives it a marshmallow-y interior. So, as such companies are wont to do to this day, an American cornstarch manufacturer put a recipe for a dessert similar to pavlova on its packaging and began exporting to New Zealand.
In the end, neither New Zealand nor Australia can really claim to have birthed the pavlova: They didn’t invent the recipe, and they weren’t even the first to name a dessert after the dancer (Wood and Utrecht found a recipe for “strawberries Pavlova” dating from 1911). But one of them was probably the first to put the name to that recipe, and both of them deserve the credit for keeping this dessert alive and well while all the other dishes named Pavlova didn’t make it past the era when a ballerina was the biggest star in the world.”
Food52
By other hand, in France, the Pavlova Cake is normally a full crisp meringue covered with cream and fruit instead of the other creamy and marshmallow-y interior. But both versions are quite delicious in its beauty and simplicity.
Andrea Ávila