Talk:Lamington

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I've currently got a hundred - odd lamingtons in a box in my freezer, so I'll post a picture of one in a couple of days --218.101.45.57 09:58, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gelatin?!?!? Never heard of that! Is that some kiwi variant? The recipe in Oz is simple: Sponge cake coated with a mixture milk, cocoa and butter then rolled in coconut. What is the purpose of the gelatin? The variant with the cream is also found in Oz, though it's not very nice because it tends to be mock cream. Shermozle 11:35, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I heard (probably an urban legend) that the lamington originated from someone over-cooking a sponge cake, then saving it by dipping it in a thin mix of chocolate to make it more edible. Anyone actually have a source? Martin Rudat(T|@|C) 12:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Qld is very hot. If you leave cake out, it dessicates. Enrobe it in chocolate icing, and it will last longer. See side bar to the Lamington recipe in McMonigal, Valwyn. Australia Wide Cookbook (1995)ISBN 0646248243. The story about a piece of cake landing in gravy then into a bowl of coconut is great, but seems highly unlikely. Why would there be a bowl of coconut on a Cloncurry dinner table in the late C19th? Not exactly part of the Victorian cooking of the time. 165.121.29.125 06:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] I LOL'D

"Lamington is also a small Hamlet/village in north of Scotland near Tain. It has a postbox." I lol'd but I don't think it has shit to do with this article. Also that story sounds like horse shit, can we put it in as a myth or something?


[edit] The story in the article

Although the idea of a Baron flinging a gravy-covered cake over his shoulder into a banquet hall is beautiful, I have to say that I doubt this story a bit.--Deville (Talk) 16:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

same.

[edit] Gravy-lam story unconfirmed, but has history

Some basic googling has revealed that the gravy-lam tale certainly has legs, at least as a myth. It seems to have originated in an article by John Hepworth in Nation Review in July 1977. References added to the secondary but not the original source.

--Huge Bananas 13:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The claim that he called the lamington "those bloody poofy woolly biscuits" is also from the same joke article. Walkerjoe 12:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maryborough lays claim to the Lamington

Following the 1893 floods that swept away the old wooden bridge over the Mary River in Maryborough QLD the new concrete bridge - built by engineer Alfred Barton - was opened by Gov. Lamington in 1896, promptly named the Lamington Bridge, as it remains to this day, and after the ceremony they retired to the hotel up the road (Now called the Lamington Hotel) for lunch. There, the cook had run out of dessert ingredients and ..... yes the rest is history.--MichaelGG 13:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you tell me where you got this story from? Walkerjoe 12:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I lived in Maryborough for several years and it's local folklore. However pinning it down to published textual information is hard... like many urban myths!!! You might like to contact the Fraser Coast Chronicle (previously the Maryborough Chronicle). --MichaelGG 09:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Michael. I'll see what they can come up with. 124.187.78.43 10:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

What lends a bit of credence to all the Lamington stories is that the hon. Governor presided during the 1890s Depression and the lack of dessert ingredients would fit in with the poverty of the times. According to a book I read on Brisbane in the 1890s bread and dripping was considered a good feed, let alone cakes and desserts!! Best of luck with the Maryborough research, The Lamington Bridge and Lamington Hotel are the best surviving links to the Gov. himself and bridge dedication ceremony most certainly took place, so it strikes me as a solid contender for the origin of the noble cake itself. Oh for a time machine!!--

On a totally off-topic I grew up in Newcastle On Tyne in the UK where, as we all knew as GOSPEL , the Tyne Bridge was the prototype of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and built by the same company. It is now known that the S.H.B. was well underway and the Tyne Bridge was actually based upon it. Point of story? Local myths can become entrenched for generations and it takes something like Wikipedia to come along and sort out the truth! Hopefully Lamingtons included! MichaelGG 03:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Toowoomba story

Why is the Toowoomba story "The most probable version of events"? I have been conducting research on the origin of the lamington, and have not found it so.

A Toowoomba City Council representative emailed me regarding the city's claim to the cake after I questioned the reliability of this story, which they have recounted on tiles on footpaths (read the tile on my site, http://history.joewalker.org/2007/03/26/lamingtons-the-plot-thickens/). The email said that "The information is not certain," and that "A local man, Col Young, believes his grandmother, Fanny Young invented them. Fanny was employed as a cook to Lord Lamington when the first lamington appeared."

The Toowoomba story is based on Col Young's story that his grandmother invented them, and has (as far as I can tell) no documentary evidence. Also, the Toowoomba story states that the lamington was invented as it is today, while early references describe a different cake that gradually evolved into what we have today (see my earlier article on lamingtons, http://history.joewalker.org/?p=23). The Toowooomba City Council seem to have been pushing this unsubstantiated story for reasons of civic pride.

I plan to contact Col Young and will post an article and an update here regarding the reliability of his claim. Walkerjoe 12:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Origin - John Hepworth writing in the Nation Review, July 1977

Further to "Gravy-lam story unconfirmed, but has history" above:

In Frank Devine's That's Language column in the Weekend Australian of 12-13 June 1999, he reports on the origin of the name of the cake. He bases his research on an article in the periodical Ozwords, published by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. That article was unsigned but Frank Devine says it is stylistically identical to the work of the editor, Frederick Ludowyck. According to this article, there is no recorded association whatsoever of the cake with Lord Lamington until the late (and, according to Devine, "radically untrustworthy") John Hepworth wrote about it in the July 1977 issue of Nation Review. This is where the story of the irascible diner and the dish of brown gravy apparently comes from. Hepworth also mentions a certain Alice Lovelightly as being the one with the genius to think of substituting chocolate sauce for the brown gravy. It would be interesting to discover if there ever was such a person as the wonderfully-named Alice Lovelightly.

Writes Frank Devine: "Ludowyck finds no mention of it in the 2nd edition of Sidney J Baker's The Australian Language (published 1966). The 1976 Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary says "origin unknown". In 1981, the Courier-Mail retold John Hepworth's spurious tale in a revised form - Finding a large amount of stale cake in the Government House kitchen during Lord Lamington's residence, the staff dipped it in chocolate, sprinkled it with coconut and served it at a dinner for parliamentarians - who demanded the recipe. In this revised form, the legend took off.

Thus, as far as the professional researchers of these things are concerned, the Lord Lamington story has only become received wisdom since 1981. If Ludowyck and Devine are right, what everyone believes as fact is actually based on a fabrication dating from as recently as 1977, and the author of it is dead so we can't ask him to reveal his sources. Frank Devine concludes with "Ludowyck shrewdly draws attention to the uniquity of cakes named for English localities, the Bath and Chelseas buns, for instance, the Eccles cake. I bet he has found the leamington 's true home".

See also this. -- JackofOz 13:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error

Someone needs to update the second link, the original location has been seemingly removed from the ANU website.--TeChNoWC (talk) 04:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)