Word.ws English Dictionary

neenish tart

neenish tart noun: a small tart with a pastry base and gelatine-set cream filling, covered with icing in two colours, half and half.

neenish tart: a small tart with a pastry base and gelatine-set cream filling, covered with icing in two colours,...
Image: Ryanbesso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

neenish tart (plural neenish tarts)

  1. (Australia) A small tart with a pastry base and gelatine-set cream filling, covered with icing in two colours, half and half.
    • She had thought of a neenish tart but then wondered if the filling might run.2008, Elizabeth Smither, The Girl who Proposed: New Short Stories, page 14
    • “See if Mrs Clarke would like a neenish tart.”2010, Philip Marshall, Wainui Days, page 82

Forms of neenish tart

pluralneenish tarts
alternative formnienich tart

Origin of neenish tart

Unknown. The oldest known reference is a September 1895 advertisement in the Sydney Sunday Times for Nenish cakes. Derivation from a German or Viennese German word has been suggested, and the early spellings nienich (1935) and nenische (1959) appear consistent with a German origin, but the "very English" spelling neenish has been common since even earlier, being in a January 1903 recipe in the Launceston Daily Telegraph, a May 1924 Melbourne Argus article, and a 1929 cookbook by Lucy Drake, suggesting the Germanic spellings may have developed later to give the dish a Continental feel. A popular claim that the tarts were first made by a Ruby Neenish in Grong Grong, New South Wales circa 1913, when she ran low on cocoa preparing for an unexpected shower tea and made do with half-chocolate/half-white icing, was a hoax.

Questions about neenish tart

What does neenish tart mean?
Neenish tart means a small tart with a pastry base and gelatine-set cream filling, covered with icing in two colours, half and half.
What part of speech is neenish tart?
Neenish tart is a noun.
What is the plural of neenish tart?
The plural of neenish tart is neenish tarts.

Words near neenish tart in the dictionary

  1. Neenan
  2. Neenans
  3. neener
  4. Neengatu
  5. neenish
  6. neenish tart
  7. neenish tarts
  8. neeny
  9. neep
  10. neep lantern
  11. neep lanterns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neenish tart (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “neenish tart.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/neenish_tart. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.