I copied this on the last day of the year 2024 from the Newsletter Kel sends out: What is Aussie Language?
Just subscribe to learn about Aussie Slang and Aussies plus their sense of Humor.
Which is not British, and far from German, which is mostly dry like Loriot.
Language and the Gap.
Cultures and the Gaps, id est Plural!
Not to become political on this hot day in Dubbo NSW.
OZWORD OF THE DAY: “Neenish tart”
Australia has a number of sweet, baked treats. To the best of my knowledge the classic ‘Ice Vo Vo’ is ours. (As a friend of mine remarked: ‘Is it always plural? Or is it possible to have an Iced Vo?’)
In Adelaide you can find a try a frog cake– a small cake shaped like a frog with an open mouth and covered in icing (usually green, although pink and chocolate are also available), invented by Balfours bakery of Adelaide in 1922.
Or, perhaps, you’d like a sinker a solid fruit square, with flaky pastry on the top and bottom and topped with pink icing. Or, perhaps, a German cake – a yeast cake with a crumble topping sometimes with fruit (either apple or apricot) under the crumble.
But then there’s the classic ‘neenish tart’—the great Australian baked treat.
A neenish tart is a small pastry case filled with mock cream and iced in two colours – white and brown or pink and brown. But is this a distinctively Australian culinary item? And, if so, where does the name come from?
When this question was being debated in the columns of The Sydney Morning Herald in 1988 a certain Mrs Evans claimed that neenish tarts were first made in her hometown of Grong Grong.
She nominated Mrs Ruby Neenish, a friend of her mother, as the originator. Mrs Evans said that in 1913, running short of cocoa and baking for an unexpected shower tea for her daughter, Ruby made do by icing her tarts with half-chocolate, half-white icing. From then on they were known as neenish tarts.
This would certainly account for the popularity of neenish tarts in country Australia. The earliest reference to the word neenish is for “neenish cakes” (not tarts) and appears in a 1929 cookery book published at Glenferrie in Victoria.
However, the citizens of Orange, in New South Wales, claim that the first true neenish tart recipe appeared in the Orange Recipe Gift Book – from where it was reproduced in many other cookery books (especially Country Women’s Association cookbooks).
However, there is an alternative spelling of neenish as “nienish” or “nienich”. Those who think that this was the original spelling claim that the glutinous treat was originally of Viennese or German origin.
The word certainly has a Germanic ring to it, but, personally, I love the story about Ruby Neenish and I’m sticking with that!
Tonight Kel will host ‘The Late Debate’ on Sky news (8pm AEDT)
Blogger Peter Hanns Bloecker
In Dubbo NSW far from Sydney on Tue 31 Dec 2024.
More about Ruby Gaps here soon …