The odd history of an accidental dessert

If we thought Eton Mess was always about strawberries, cream and meringue, well, as with a lot of things in the lore of food, we would be wrong.

- By Tony Jackman

Many stories are apocryphal, or maybe, but that doesn't mean they're not good stories.

The one about a big bowl of strawberries, cream and meringue being dropped on the floor during a cricket match between Eton and Harrow in 1893, and the students scraping it up off the floor rather than wasting it, is good enough for many of us.

Unless you'd rather go with the labrador theory? That would have a labrador, during an Eton-Harrow match in the 1930s (some reports say the 1920s), casually sitting down on a picnic basket holding a large amount of strawberries and meringues ... pavlova, really ... but, nah, let's skip right past that one. Even hungry student toffs might be unlikely to tuck into dog-hair pudding.