After writing the post below, I looked up Pavlova, the greatest dessert ever created, to see if there was a resolution to the Antipodean "who actually invented it" war and came across this: PAVLOVA!
Did you read? The earliest known recipe came from New Zealand, so they have "the righteous claiming rights." ... but then it goes on to say that New Zealand also invented the ANZAC biscuit!
Bahh hahha hhha! That is just sooo funny!
I once did an M.A. paper on "The Creation of the Australian Identity", where I postulated that Australian Nationalism was founded and predicated on the creation of this very ANZAC biscuit!
Do you know that story? How, while pinned down under enemy fire, on a beach in Turkey, a bunch of ANZACs (The Australian and New Zealand Army Corp), invented a delicious biscuit.
Isn't that just so unbearably cool? I LOVE that they did this? And, when they heard, so did the entire nation of Australia! It was this single piece of news from the War Front that made the entire country so deeply proud and, more importantly, to realise it was an "entirely different breed" from their English Overlords and so they challenged the British, who, under the command of a young Winston Churchill, were killing off thousands of ANZACs needlessly, in stupid and pointless unwinnable individual sortees, and tossed them aside in order to take over the running of The Battle of Gallipoli and no ANZACs died from that point onwards. Not a single one.
So it was the ANZAC biscuit that made Australia into A Real Nation ... and now it turns out it was the KIWI guys on the beach, dodging enemy fire, and, with the greatest courage, level-headed fearlessness and insouciant grace, doing the cooking, tasting, modifying and recooking needed to come up with a decent recipe!
Bahhh haah haahhh!
Dear oh dear oh dear. And the other sources of "The Great Australian Pride" - QANTAS, TELECOM, and the CSIRO - the best airline, the best telecommunications and the best science company on earth - were all sold off to other nations under the John Howard government!
Oh yes, and Arnotts Biscuit Company, makers of ANZAC Biscuits et al, was sold off too. To the Americans to boot, which made it so much worse, considering how anti-American Australia has always been. And then the Yanks immediately announced that "ANZAC biscuits were an inferior product", and they were about to change the recipe! Can you imagine the outrage! You don't call a biscuit invented under enemy fire "inferior"! Immediately the song "Those Bastards Buggered Our Biscuit" became a major hit on the local Folk Circuit!
And I actually do know folk - and you know who you are - who actually bought and ate the Yanks new ANZAC Cookie, and said "They're right! This IS a better biscuit!", but everyone immediately shouted them down in total outrage!
And who can blame them! Australian Nationalism was indeed founded and predicated on ANZAC biscuits being exactly what they were! A recipe created with under conditions requiring the greatest courage, level-headed fearlessness and insouciant grace ...
... so it's such a great pity, isn't it, that it was actually the Kiwi contingent of the ANZACs who created it.
Baahhhh hahahhha hahahahhhahhhhh!
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2 comments:
Since you asked for a comment, here it is. New Zealanders did NOT invent the ANZAC biscuit. The recipe had already been floating around recipe books in Australia (and probably New Zealand) for years under the name Soldiers' Biscuits. Before that, they were called (something like) Oat (or Oatmeal) Cookies and came from a traditional and very old Scottish recipe. From memory, the only difference between the old Scottish recipe and our current recipe for ANZAC biscuits is that we added coconut, and put in golden syrup instead of brown sugar. The newer ingredients were chosen specifically because they wouldn't spoil on the long journey by ship to reach the A and NZ forces overseas. ANZAC biscuits were NOT invented on the beaches of Gallipoli -- they were sent in care packages to Australian and New Zealand soldiers FROM HOME by their wives and mothers and the CWA-type organisatons who put together extra rations for soldiers. They were often packed in Billy Tea tins so they would remain airtight on the way. They'd already been around for years Under the name "Soldiers' Biscuits" -- AND they'd been sent (as Soldiers' Biscuits) to the WWI forces long before Gallipoli. It was only AFTER the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 that they were re-named ANZAC biscuits as a patriotic colloquialism. It's embarrassingly ludicrous for you or anyone else to claim that New Zealand "invented" the biscuits, considering their already long and rich history prior to 1915.
I just read your link to the Wikipedia entry on ANZAC biscuits. It reads very, very badly and does not even meet Wikipedia's quality standards! It's probably worthwhile always remembering that Wikipedia is NEVER the most reliable source of information on ANYTHING, since it's open to constant editing by anyone out there (including the village idiot) who has anything at all to say. x
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