They don't agree.

The question asks for a single country, but the record doesn't give one. The surviving evidence is cookbooks, newspapers and magazines. The earliest recipes found so far under the pavlova name are New Zealand's, but an earlier Australian recipe could still turn up. The claim to have invented the dish at a specific moment for the dancer rests on anecdote, not documents. The best-supported answer is that New Zealand has the earlier documented claim and Australia has a credible competing one.

• Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926. Both countries claim the dessert was created in her honour.
• Helen Leach, a New Zealand food historian, researched the dessert's history. She found New Zealand recipes using the name from the late 1920s, and a 1929 New Zealand recipe is often cited.
• The earliest Australian recipe commonly cited dates from 1935. Western Australia has a claim from the Perth chef Bert Sachse.
• The Oxford English Dictionary has treated New Zealand as the earlier source for the name and the dish. Australian sources dispute this.
• Meringue-and-cream desserts existed in Europe and the US before the pavlova, so the exact origin of the dish is blurred.

If choosing between Australia and New Zealand, the published record favours New Zealand. But the earliest surviving recipe does not necessarily identify where a dish was first invented: pavlova developed from an older tradition of meringue cakes, and historians differ over whether its development can be attributed to one country or cook.

• Food historian Helen Leach identified a New Zealand recipe for pavlova as a meringue cake published in 1929.
• The Australian origin story credits Perth hotel chef Bert Sachse with creating it in 1935.
• Early jelly desserts called pavlova were different from the meringue dessert meant today.
• Researchers have documented earlier European meringue cakes with cream and fruit, complicating claims of a single national invention.

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Australia and New Zealand have engaged in a decades-long rivalry over who invented the pavlova, both linking it to tours made by Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in the 1920s. In the trans-Tasman paper trail, New Zealand has the older claim: its earliest published recipe for a meringue-based 'Pavlova cake' appeared in 1929, six years before Western Australian chef Herbert Sachse served his famous version in Perth. However, research into culinary archives by food historians revealed that neither nation actually created the confection. Identical structures of baked meringue shells filled with cream and fruit evolved from 18th- and 19th-century German and Austrian tortes and were widely disseminated through American cookbooks and ingredient packaging decades before the dish acquired the ballerina's name in the Antipodes.

• Centuries before the 1920s, similar meringue, cream, and fruit desserts existed in Europe, such as the Austrian Spanische Windtorte and German Schaumtorte.
• Culinary historians have cataloged over 150 meringue-and-cream cake recipes published in Europe and the United States prior to 1926.
• The earliest known printed recipe for a meringue cake called 'pavlova' appeared in New Zealand in the 1929 New Zealand Dairy Exporter Annual.
• Australia's primary claim dates to 1935, when chef Herbert Sachse prepared the dessert at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth.
• The Oxford English Dictionary and food historians credit New Zealand with the earliest documentary evidence linking the name to the dish.

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This is a 'which country' question where the evidence does not settle it cleanly, so the answer is partly. The naming evidence, judged by documented dates, favours New Zealand (1927), which is why the Oxford English Dictionary and several food historians lean that way. Australia's counter-claim is that the modern pavlova as people now know it — crisp meringue shell with cream and fruit — was developed and standardised there in the 1930s. Since the question is about invention as an ordinary person means it, and both the earliest record and the modern form matter, the fair verdict is a contested one that leans to New Zealand on the earliest documentation rather than a clean win for either country.

• The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest recorded evidence for the word 'pavlova' as a dessert is from New Zealand in 1927.
• Food historian Helen Leach (University of Otago) traced New Zealand recipes for a pavlova-style dish to 1927, with the meringue-and-cream form appearing through the late 1920s.
• The earliest widely cited Australian recipe using the name 'pavlova' is from a 1935 Sydney cookbook (Mrs McKay's Practical Cookery Book).
• The dish is named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926.
• Both countries still claim the dish, and the trans-Tasman argument over its origin has run for decades without a decisive end.

The question of whether pavlova was invented in Australia or New Zealand is a long-standing debate. The evidence shows that both countries contributed to the dessert's development. The earliest known recipe resembling the modern pavlova was published in New Zealand in 1929, but Australia also has a well-documented claim from 1935. Food historians, such as Helen Leach and Michael Symons, argue that the pavlova is the result of a gradual evolution of meringue-based desserts, with recipes circulating and being adapted in both countries. The pavlova's origin is not a single invention but a process of social invention, making it accurate to say that both countries played a role in its creation.

• The earliest recorded recipe resembling the modern pavlova was published in New Zealand in 1929.
• An Australian chef, Herbert Sachse, claimed to have created the pavlova in 1935 at the Hotel Esplanade in Perth.
• The pavlova likely evolved from earlier meringue-based desserts, such as the Austro-Hungarian Spanische Windtorte.
• Both countries have strong cultural and historical claims to the dessert, and its development was a process of social invention.
• The Oxford English Dictionary and food historians note that the pavlova's origins are shared between Australia and New Zealand.

1. Pavlova en.wikipedia.org
2. The story behind pavlova, the dessert that sparked an international rivalry | National Geographic nationalgeographic.com
3. Pavlova (disambiguation) en.wikipedia.org
4. r/todayilearned on Reddit: TIL the origins of the dessert named Pavlova are unknown with both Australia and New Zealand claiming to be the country of origin. reddit.com
5. The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise en.wikipedia.org
6. Pavlova | Meaning, Origin, & Dessert | Britannica britannica.com
7. History of Pavlova Cake: From Ballerina to Dessert Icon cakemiami.com
8. The surprising truth about pavlova’s origins bbc.com