Our Story
The Cowell's Story
In 1963, Ron and Audrey Cowell opened their first coffee shop in Dunedin. One dessert captured everyone’s attention - the pavlova they perfected from family tradition. As word spread, a dedicated pavlova kitchen was born, and by 1972 Cowell’s Genuine Pavlova was supplying all of Dunedin. Over the next decade, the business expanded across Aotearoa while keeping the same legendary recipe and commitment to quality. Today, every pavlova we bake carries that same heritage, from our ovens in Dunedin to tables across New Zealand.
Ron & Audrey Cowell were both born in the United Kingdom. They decided to settle in New Zealand in 1949. Ron found employment with New Zealand Industrial Gases in Dunedin and that would be their town for life. "We never wanted to live elsewhere."
1963 saw the grand opening of the Cowell's Coffee shop at 119 Stuart Street, Dunedin. With business going well the Cowell's opened a second shop in St Andrew Street in 1966.
One of the popular items on the menu was the Cowell's Pavlova. Over the coming years the pair perfected the recipe and slowly but surely, the popularity of their pavlova grew.
By 1972 the sales of the pavlovas had grown and the Cowell's established their first dedicated pavlova kitchen in Bath Street, Dunedin. For a time they also baked cheesecakes from this location. 1976 saw a move to a brand new kitchen in Vire Street as the Bath Street building was demolished.
From 1978 - 1981, Cowell's Genuine Pavlova kitchens were opened in Wellington, Auckland & Hamilton, all under license and all using the same Cowell's recipe. Now all four licenses are owned and operated through Cowell's Limited in Dunedin.
Audrey Cowell has now passed away after overseeing many aspects of the Cowell's Genuine Pavlova New Zealand operation for decades. Her recipe lives on today.
"Pavlova was something everybody had on special occasions, especially family occasions. Our product made it easy and avoided the multiple disasters that people often told us they had when baking pavlova" - Ron Cowell.
Pavlova History - Where did it all begin?
Our pavlova is crisp on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, and made using a recipe refined over more than half a century. We use only the finest ingredients and slow-bake each pavlova to deliver consistent quality every time - so your Christmas, celebration, or birthday moment tastes as good as tradition promises.
Some sources claim that the recipe for pavlova originated in New Zealand, while others claim it was invented in Australia. However, like the Anzac biscuit, the earliest known books containing the recipe were published in New Zealand.
Professor Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist at Otago University in New Zealand found a pavlova recipe in a 1933 Rangiora Mothers' Union cookery book. Professor Leach also has an even earlier copy of the pavlova recipe from a 1929 rural New Zealand magazine.
Keith Money, a biographer of Anna Pavlova, wrote that a chef at a hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, created the dish when the ballerina visited there in 1926 on her world tour.
The claim that it was an Australian invention states that the pavlova is based on a cake baked by Bert Sachse at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth on 3 October 1935. Sachse's descendants believe he may have come up with the recipe earlier than that, since Anna Pavlova visited Australia in 1926 and 1929 and died in 1931.
What is Pavlova?
Pavlova is made by beating egg whites to a very stiff consistency before folding in sugar, vanilla, and vinegar, and slow-baking the mixture to create the pavlova/meringue. This makes the outside of the pavlova a crisp crunchy shell, while the interior remains soft and moist.
Further reading
Leach, Helen M. (1997). The pavlova cake: the evolution of a national dish. In Harlan Walker (ed.)
Food on the Move: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1996 (pp. 219-223). Devon, England: Prospect Books.
Anna Pavlova
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova (12 February 1881 – 19 January 1931) was a famous ballet dancer of the early 20th century.
The Pavlova dessert was named after Anna Pavlova, although its origins continue to be debated. Both New Zealand and Australia have claimed the credit. It is believed that a chef at a hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour. The white dessert was meant to replicate her tutu.
Pavlova was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the age of eight she was rejected from the Imperial Ballet School because she was too small for her age and was asked to return when she reached her tenth year. At age ten, she entered the school, and in April 1891 danced in her very first performance as a cupid in Marius Petipa's A Fairy Tale. She trained under some of the greatest teachers of the day: Christian Johansson, Pavel Gerdt, Nikolai Legat, and the great Ballerina Ekaterina Vazem (creator of the role of Nikiya in La Bayadère), and graduated in 1899 at age 16, being allowed to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée. She rose through the ranks quickly, as she was a favorite of the old Maestro Petipa. She was second soloist in 1902, Première Danseuse in 1905, and finally Prima Ballerina in 1906
after a resounding performance in Giselle, for which Petipa revised the Ballerina's dances especially for her (they are still performed today in this version at the Mariinsky). She was much celebrated by the fanatical balletomanes of Tsarist St. Petersburg. Her legions of fans called themselves the Pavlovtzi.
Pavlova forever changed the ideal for ballerinas. In the 1890s, ballerinas at the Mariinsky Theatre were expected to be strong technicians, and this usually meant a strong, muscular, compact body. When prima ballerina assoluta Mathilde Kschessinska became pregnant in 1901, she coached Pavlova in the role of Nikya in La Bayadere. Kschessinska was certain Pavlova would fail miserably in the role, as she was considered technically weak. Instead audiences became enchanted with Pavlova and her frail, ethereal look. Pavlova was thin and delicate-looking; she was perfect for romantic roles such as Giselle. Her feet were extremely arched, so she strengthened her pointe shoe by adding a piece of hard leather on the soles for support and flattening the box of the shoe. At the time, many considered this "cheating." But this became the modern pointe shoe, as pointe work became less painful and easier for curved feet.
In the first years of the Ballets Russes she worked briefly for Serge Diaghilev. Originally she was to dance the lead in Mikhail Fokine's The Firebird, but refused the part, as she could not come to terms with Stravinsky's score (the role went to Tamara Karsavina). By the mid 1900s she founded her own company and performed throughout the world. Sadly, she often chose to dance 'pretty', self-choreographed dances to insignificant and often sentimental music. She was considered by many people to be supremely unintelligent (unlike Karsavina, with whom one could converse about anything, Pavlova showed no interest in anything but her next performance). These faults, however, were as nothing when compared to the incandescent beauty of her dancing, her bourees like a string of pearls, as the ballet writer Cyril Beaumont put it.
Her most famous showpiece was The Dying Swan, choreographed for her by Michel Fokine, danced to "The Swan" from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. View a video of Anna Pavlova in The Dying Swan, Kirov Ballet, 1907 by going to the website youtube.com and typing in the search function "Anna Pavlova".
She died of pleurisy in The Hague, Netherlands while touring, three weeks before her 50th birthday. Anna said "If I can't dance then I'd rather be dead. So can you prepare my swan costume?"
In accordance with ballet tradition, on the day she was to have next performed, the show went on as scheduled, with a single spotlight circling an empty stage where the dancer would have been. She was cremated, and services were held in a Russian Orthodox Church in London before burial in Golders Green Cemetery in London. Her remains were moved in 2001 to the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow in accordance with her requests and after considerable controversy.
