The delicious. Produce Awards are all well and good, celebrating the best producers and growers out there, but who celebrates those first pioneers of the fields, factories and kitchens, whose ideas became matters of national pride? Me, that’s who! So, here it is, my honour roll of Australia’s great food inventions.

TRUE CLASSICS

From South Australia’s heritage-listed Pie Floater, first served in the 1890s at Ern ‘Shorty’ Bradley’s Port Pirie coffee cart, to that glorious mix of mince, tomatoes and spaghetti that we know as Spag Bol (all the rage in 1930s Sydney), Australians are no slouches when it comes to culinary creativity. In 1935, Bert Sachse made the first pavlova in Perth, based on a recipe by Sydney’s Emily Futter in her 1922 tome Miss Futter’s Australian Home Cookery – one of the proudest titles in my old cookbook collection.

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BAKED ICONS

Let’s avoid the obvious like lamingtons, Tim Tams and Anzac biscuits in favour of Queensland’s pumpkin scones, first seen in print in 1913. The slice is another great Australian invention and far superior to US bar cookies – whether caramel slice or jelly. Our creativity also runs rampant when it comes to putting things on bread, whether it’s Vegemite, first scraped from a brewer’s barrel in 1923, or the coloured sugar sprinkles that gave us fairy bread.

FRUIT & VEG

Our long history of gifting new fruit and veg to the world started with Maria Ann Smith’s Granny Smith apple in Sydney in 1868, and in 1895, Packham pears grown by Charles Packham in Molong, NSW. German settlers in SA gave us the corella pear in the late 19th century. Later, worldwide success greeted John Cripps’ Pink Lady apple from WA, first sold in ’91. Nellie Kelly passionfruit, grafted by Clarence Walter Kelly in Lismore in 1921, was one of the first fruit trademarked (in ’58).

GLORIOUS JUNK

Inspired by the new Nellie Kelly, Lismore passionfruit farmer Spencer Cottee launched Passiona in 1924, the start of a soft drink empire. In Toowoomba, Cyril Weis’ 1936 invention the Fruito Bar, featuring passionfruit, pineapple and banana, became the first Weis Bar. Melbourne’s Macpherson Robertson gave us the Cherry Ripe (1924) and Freddo Frog (1930), while in SA, the iconic FruChocs were born in 1948. In the 1940s and ’50s, the dimmy, Chiko Roll and Twisties also appeared. The ’50s also gave us Brockhoff’s Savoury Shapes out of Melbourne. Barbecue Shapes followed, but we’d have to wait until the ’70s for Peter Brinkworth to start using his genius idea – chicken salt – in his Gawler, SA, chicken shop.

Related: Matt Preston is bananas about this zero waste food tip

DINKUM DRINKS

While Bundaberg Rum and Foster’s Lager are icons, rum and lager are hardly uniquely Australian. Not so cask wine. Thomas Angove of Renmark, SA, invented the silver bag in 1965 and Penfolds’ Charles Malpas perfected it with the tap soon after. Another of our fine wine inventions was sparkling burgundy (or shiraz) at the close of the 19th century. Credit Hans Irvine of Great Western or Edmond Mazure of Auldana for the perfect breakfast wine for bacon and eggs. Try it – revelatory!

GENIUS GEAR

Amongst other inventions that helped us eat better was William McArthur’s splayd – a cross between a spoon and knife – launched in 1943 to help ladies to eat off their laps at barbecues. The 1952 launch of the Esky Auto Box is just another example of canny Aussies improving culinary life… A bit like this recipe, which pre-cooks cauliflower in the microwave to ensure even cooking, no tedious drying out after blanching or uneven cooking from roasting. Aussie ingenuity strikes again!

Find the recipe for the whole-roasted cacio e pepe cauliflower pictured above, here.