Even More Pavlova

I seem to be doing New Zealand’s work of cultural differentiation from Australia for her. Yesterday I found that The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary, edited by Tony Deverson and Graeme Kennedy for the New Zealand Dictionary Centre (2005) has finally hit the shelves of the Starr Main Reference Room in the Sterling Memorial Library here at Yale. However, I was shocked to find that they ascribe pavlova, n. (p. 832) simply to “orig. NZ & Aust.” I feel strongly that this is technically incorrect. My own researches have clearly demonstrated that the canonical pavlova was named in New Zealand, and co-opted soon afterwards by the envious Depression-era housewives of Australia. In her exhaustive The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand’s Culinary History, Helen Leach has evidently gone into same the question in far more exhaustive detail, but thankfully she appears to concur. I have not yet had an opportunity to read her book, but I am assured that my copy is on its way from A1 Books in the village of Westham in East Sussex. In due course, therefore, I should say that unless we uncover unequivocal Australian evidence in the form of some pre-1929 smoking meringue “orig. NZ & Aust” should definitely read “orig. NZ,” punkt, point, basta così. Meanwhile, pavlova, n., the brave promotional gambit of Davis Gelatine (a rather sordid jelly concocted with inter alia milk and orange juice), and pavlova, n., the American ice-cream (c. 1926) of which I can find no trace at all, evidently require separate definitions. None of which helps us to solve the problem of pavlova, adj., the mysterious color quite aggressively marketed by at least a handful of Melbourne department stores between 1926 and 1928.

More Pavlova

Two melancholy, non-chromatic footnotes to the 1926 visit to Melbourne of the great ballerina Anna Matveyevna Pavlova, one equine and the other culinary:

During the 1926 foaling season the name of Pavlova was co-opted (perhaps inevitably), and as a two year-old, on May 26, 1928, this Pavlova ran in the novelty pony race at Maffra in East Gippsland, carrying a seven-pound handicap. According to the Canberra Times of March 11, 1929 (p. 4), Pavlova won the highweight handicap at Rosehill by 2½ lengths. He was ridden on that day by the well-known jockey E. (Ted) Bartle. This was evidently Pavlova’s only victory, and apart from running at Sandown Park and Rosehill again in 1930 he seems to have diminished into obscurity shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, anticipating by at least a year the advent of the canonical New Zealand delicacy, the Argus (November 17, 1928, p. 5) carried an unfortunate, celebratory report of Auguste Escoffier’s most recent effort in myth-making, which is doubly unfortunate for the company the two women are obliged to keep, and the expediently demotic flavor of what for the time being was Anna Pavlova’s only culinary referent:

Mussolini has been honoured by the great chef, M. Escoffier, who has produced a new dish entitled “Supremes de Poulet Mussolini.” “Il Duce” will be able to claim that he is one of the only three living personages whose names have been given to table delicacies other than those concocted for special occasions. Dame Nellie Melba, of course, has found fame apart from her art in the famous sweet composed of peaches and cream, while Mme. Anna Pavlova lends her name to a popular variety of American ice-cream.