Lamingtons
Published on 28 December 2024 by Andrew Owen (2 minutes)
Aussies (Australians) and Kiwis (New Zealanders) argue about the origin of many things. The Anzac biscuits, the flat white, Pavlova and the racehorse Phar Lap (whose hide is in Melbourne and skeleton in Wellington). And lately, Kiwis have also been claiming the Lamington.
The generally accepted origin is that it was named after Lord Lamington, governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901, with the earliest known recipe published in Queensland Country Life in 1900. But in 2014, The Guardian published an article claiming that University of Auckland researchers had found a Lamington in an 1888 painting by Kiwi artist JR Smythe. A decade later, this still gets mentioned in Kiwi news outlets. There’s just one problem: it was an April Fool’s hoax. The Guardian has a long history of these, the most famous of which being its report on San Serriffe.
And yet, during a year in Australia at the turn of the century, I encountered no lamingtons. I first discovered them in Wellington, New Zealand while working at the Ministry of Youth Development (derogatorily, but with some justification, known by the other ministries as the Ministry of Morning Teas). I had a great time learning Te Reo and the Haka, playing guitar and attending many morning teas. I was initially hired as a temp to do some data entry, but I was kept on to help organize Youth Parliament 2024 and I joined the Kapa Haka group. We performed in parliament (in front of the governor general) to welcome the students.
I had forgotten about the lamingtons and the morning teas unti,l while looking up Marguerite Patten’s recipe for brandy butter, I spotted a familiar sounding recipe. It all came back to me in a Proustian moment.
The traditional filling is raspberry jam. For the coating: