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50 WORD MICROFICTION
One of the Most Contentious Desserts in History
Thrifty Words Challenge #15: Transformation
The egg whites glistened in the bowl.
The whisk thrashed air and sugar through the mix, turning the clear liquid into a silky white foam.
Heat made it hard on the outside and soft in the middle.
Whipped cream, passion fruit, and banana made it Pavlova.
The transformation was complete.
Why contentious? Get an Australian and a New Zealander in a room and ask them — both will claim the Pavlova was invented in their country.
Food writer, TV personality, and all-round food celebrity Matt Preston wrote,
Sure, Australian chef Bert Sachse, from Perth’s Esplanade Hotel, might have made this baked meringue dessert famous in 1935 as a homage to ballerina Anna Pavlova (who, some six years earlier, had stayed at the hotel on her second Australian tour in 1929). The trouble, however, is that the same meringue homages to the Russian prima ballerina had already appeared in New Zealand in 1929.
Furthermore, when Pavlova first toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926, recipes for topping a fat pat of soft-hearted but crunchy-crusted meringue with…
