The True Origins of Bakewell Tart, and Pavlovas ?

Problems
Who invented the British Bakewell Tart?
What's the Difference between a Bakewell Tart and a Bakewell Pudding?
Who invented the Pavlova?
Who said, "let them eat cake"?
Who invented fish and chips?
Pizza?

Chop Suey?

Answers
The Bakewell tart was supposedly invented in Bakewell. However, if you go back through the printed editions of cookery books, a similar recipe appeared in Mrs Beeton's recipe book before the opening of the shop in Bakewell on the site of the inn where the cook make it popular. You'll have to check the dates, if you are bothered.

Mrs Beeton lived in Hatch End, a short wide street called The Broadway, on the Uxbridge Road, going towards Uxbridge, near Hatch End station, in Pinner (which has another station called Pinner station) in North West London. Unfortunately Mrs Beeton's house no longer stands. (The area was bombed in WWII, as you can see from photos in the archives of the Heath Robinson museum in Pinner.

Mrs Beeton  was the young wife of a publisher and at his request compiled a book of Household management and a recipe book. Both were best sellers. Unfortunately she died young, after childbirth. Her book is still in print and a heritage plaque is on a restaurant in the high street, going from the railway station, cross the road on the crossing, and the the restaurant is the last one at the other end of the shops - only a few minutes walk.

Mrs Beeton took some of her recipes from a book by Eliza Acton. If you read Eliza Acton's book, she claims to have compiled a recipe based on the dish she was served by a Jewish house wife in London's East End.

Fish and chips is also reputed to be based on food served by Jews who were in the East End of London, where they lived because that is where they got off the boats from Europe. (In the days before plane travel.)

Whilst this is amusing, recipes transform and improve. The origin of French Tarte Tatin, supposedly served by two sisters, after the dimmest or most accident prone one turned an apple dessert upside down with the pastry underneath and apples on top, a tart, instead of the pie with apples underneath and a pastry topping, a pudding.

Tart Tatin is nicely alliterative. Bakewell tart is a great name, sounding like bake well.

The French introduced controls over use of the name of areas of origin to protect the reputation of their wines. Champagne must come from the area of Champagne. A drink produced elsewhere is called Champagne method. What starts as a dispute between two people two shops, two restaurants, or two large companies, or two countries, moves to a registered trade mark and a court case over infringement. We are increasingly finding places of origin being registered, sometimes after after a dispute and judgement, so that you cannot call something a Cornish (pasty or otherwise) if it doesn't come from Cornwall, or Scotch (such as whisky) if it doesn't come from Scotland.

The origins of Pizza are claimed to be from both Italy and the USA. Chop Suey, a Chinese dish, from the USA. What often happens is that a dish or product is taken by traders or immigrants from one country to another. Ingredients change. Cooking methods change. The original name may stay or be changed. The person whose name is attached to the product may not be the first inventor or creator, but the person with the most marketing push or the alliterative name. For example, Singer Sewing machines. (From a Mr Singer of the Singer family in the USA, on Singer Island in Florida, but Singer also had a home in England. Singer and sewing machine are neatly alliterative. His big push was to mass produce industrial sewing machines small enough to be convenient and cheap enough for every home to have one, bought not outright but on credit with a small weekly payment known as hire purchase.)

I have wandered away from names of popular foods to the names of popular sewing machines. I shall now return to the subject of food and the origins of quotations. First Pavlova, then quotations.

Pavlova
Both Australia and New Zealand claim Pavlova as a national dish. In Perth, Australia, a hotel has a plaque claiming that Pavlova was invented in their hotel. The story goes something like this. The ballet dancer Pavlova did a very successful tour of Australia. The owner of a hotel asked the chef to increase tea time business by making a special centrepiece cake or dessert to go with the tea or coffee.

He made a large meringue and (in my version of the story it sank in the middle so he disguised it) enhanced it with strawberries in the middle. The fruit makes it less cloying, so you can eat more of the meringue, which is basically sugar and egg white. The colour contrast is also appealing.

I could not find any place in New Zealand where they claim to have invented the dish. Meringue can be made soft and mixed up with fruit as in Eton Mess, or solid enough not to sink under the fruit. A New Zealand recipe book or a magazine with a reader's letter giving the recipe pre-dated the visit of Pavlova to Australia.

It seems to me that like Tarte Tatin, Pavlova was the name which caught on. One person makes a dish. Another makes a second equally popular or more popular variation. The dish is named after the cook or chef who makes the dish popular, or a popular personality or the person or patron for whom the dish is made.

A name of a double saucepan, with the item being cooked kept cooler above a basin of boiling water is a Bain Marie in French, Mary's basin or bath of water.

Why would you care?
1 You just wonder.
2 You are fussy about accuracy.
3 To write a researched recipe book.
4 Or to set a quiz.
5 Or to make a bet as to who is right in a pub or cafe. The loser has to buy a round of Bakewell tarts!

This is the story, if I remember rightly. but I rarely remember rightly. Hardly anybody does. A story does not stay the same five minutes later, never mind after a century. You can prove this with a game of Chinese whispers.

If you have any business or social reasons for wanting to establish the origins of Bakewell tart or pudding, you had better check the current situation. If you want to try Bakewell tart, or Bakewell pudding, you can go to Bakewell to compare. But if you just want an almond slice, or almond cake, you can find them all over England, and in recipes books and the internet all around the world.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several posts on Bakewell tart and other foods and restaurants in England and around the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.