A pudding named after a ballerina
The PAVLOVA, a crisp meringue shell with a soft marshmallowy middle, topped with cream and fruit, is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926 and 1929. Both countries claim to have invented it in her honour, and the argument has run for decades. Searches through old cookbooks have tended to favour New Zealand, but nobody in Australia has given up. Our dancers page covers the woman herself.
A little cornflour and vinegar in the meringue gives a pavlova its gooey centre, which is the difference between it and a plain meringue.
What pudding means depends on where you live
In Britain, PUDDING can mean any dessert at all, as in "What's for pudding?", and also savoury dishes such as Yorkshire pudding and black pudding. In America, pudding means a smooth, creamy dessert eaten with a spoon. Americans eat a COOKIE where the British eat a biscuit; the word comes from the Dutch for a little cake.
British CUSTARD owes a lot to a Birmingham chemist called Alfred Bird, whose wife could not eat eggs. In 1837 he invented an egg-free custard powder, thickened with cornflour, so she could have custard too. It is still sold today. CRUMBLE, a fruit PIE and the TRIFLE, with its layers of sponge, fruit, custard and cream, are all proper puddings in the British sense.
Italian and French names
TIRAMISU means pick me up in Italian, probably thanks to the strong espresso soaked into its sponge fingers under a layer of mascarpone cheese. Although it tastes old-fashioned, it seems to have been created in north-east Italy around the 1960s or 1970s, and several towns claim it.
ECLAIR is French for a flash of lightning; nobody is quite sure why, though one guess is that it is eaten in a flash. A French MACARON is two smooth almond meringue shells sandwiching a filling, and should not be confused with the coconut macaroon. MOUSSE is French for foam, which describes it exactly. A TART is open on top, while a pie usually has a lid.
American inventions
The BROWNIE is often traced to the Palmer House hotel in Chicago, whose kitchen made a chocolate cake small enough for a lunch box for visitors to the 1893 World's Fair. The first written recipe for a CUPCAKE, a cake baked in small cups, appeared in an American cookbook in 1796. New York CHEESECAKE uses cream cheese, which a dairyman in New York State created by accident in 1872 while trying to copy a French cheese.
Fudge, holes and frozen puddings
The earliest known mention of FUDGE comes from a letter written by a student at Vassar College in 1888, and the name may come from an old word for a botched job; one story says a batch of caramel went wrong. It was a popular treat to make in dormitories late at night. There are many stories about who first put a hole in a DONUT, and the MUFFIN, CAKE and WAFFLE have long histories of their own. The frozen puddings in the grid, ICECREAM, GELATO, SORBET and the SUNDAE, have their own page.