The raging debate over whether the pavlova was invented in Australia or New Zealand isn't over, but the evidence uncovered so far favours the Kiwis.
One year into a three-year transtasman research project about culinary history, the New Zealanders have found published pavlova recipes which predate the fluffy meringue dessert's supposed 1935 creation in Australia by up to six years.
But descendants of the owner of Perth's Esplanade Hotel, where chef Bert Sachse is claimed to have baked the first pavlova that year, haven't given up.
Professor Helen Leach of New Zealand's University of Otago says one wrote to her suggesting Sachse may have got his dates wrong and in fact came up with the pavlova earlier than 1935.
"The family belief is very strong and that's possible," Leach says.
A descendant pointed out to her that the light-footed Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, after whom the dessert is named, toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926, then Australia only in 1929 and died in 1931.
"So why wait, as he said, till 1935 to develop the dish?"
Leach has told the descendants to look through Perth's cook books of that era to see if pavlova recipes can be found.
"But I somehow don't think they're going to find the evidence, simply because ... it's just not showing up in the cook books until really the 1940s in Australia," she said.
In New Zealand, on the other hand, a pavlova recipe appears in a 1929 rural magazine, published under a pseudonym.
And one is next found in a 1933 mothers' union cook book - submitted by a Laurina Stevens of the South Island town of Rangiora.
More evidence from both countries might surface at a food history conference at Wellington's Victoria University later this year.
"Some Australians who are interested in food history are going to come across to it so there could be more information available at that point," Leach says.
She says meringue cakes in various forms existed on both sides of the Tasman, but the pavlova name apparently emerged in the late 1920s.
Leach attributes the transtasman spread of dishes to the women's magazines of each country being published in the other.