Dumplings & ANZACs. The Golden Syrup story in Australia.

    8 April 2025

    April 2025

    Just the other day a school friend of mine living in England sent me an article from the Spectator about ‘Golden Syrup Dumplings’ which the article said are ‘a classic Australian dish’. In all my 62 years in Australia, which often has included Golden Syrup, I have never encountered them. This piqued the Australian food historian in me not just the dumplings but the Australian story of Golden Syrup generally.  I began with a search for a dumpling recipe. The earliest I found was in 1934.

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    Small Mulch

    Paul van Reyk
    My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.