Melba toast is a dry, crisp and thinly sliced toast, often served with soup and salad or topped with either melted cheese or
pâté. It is named after
Dame
''Dame'' is an honorific title and the feminine form of address for the honour of damehood in many Christian chivalric orders, as well as the Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom, British honours system and those of several oth ...
Nellie Melba, the stage name of Australian opera singer Helen Porter Mitchell. Its name is thought to date from 1897, when the singer was very ill and it became a staple of her diet. The toast was created for her by a chef who was also a fan of her,
Auguste Escoffier, who also created the
Peach Melba
Peach Melba (french: pêche Melba, pronounced ) is a dessert of peaches and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream. It was invented in 1892 or 1893 by the French chef Auguste Escoffier at the Savoy Hotel, London, to honour the Australian soprano ...
dessert for her. The hotel proprietor
César Ritz supposedly named it in a conversation with Escoffier.
Melba toast is made by lightly
toasting slices of bread under a
grill, on both sides. The resulting toast is then sliced laterally. These thin slices are then returned to the grill with the untoasted sides towards the heat source, resulting in toast half the normal thickness. Thus, it can be described as a thrice-baked food (see
rusk).
Melba toast is also available commercially, and was at one time given to infants who were
teething as a hard food substance on which to chew.
In France, it is referred to as ''croutes en dentelle''.
History
In 1925, the
Mayo Brothers prescribed the "Eighteen Day Reducing Diet" to
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore (born Ethel Mae Blythe; August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regard ...
. It included Melba toast, which made the toast very popular at the time.
[Print-ad, 1925:https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/18-Day-Reducing-Diet--1925-SS2229623.html; and Sophie C. Cubbison, autobiographical sketch, unpublished typescript. Summarized in William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, ''History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in Mexico and Central America, 1877-2009'' (Lafayette CA: SoyInfo Press, 2009), 52-53. ]
See also
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List of breads
This is a list of notable baked or steamed bread varieties. This list does not include cakes, pastries, or fried dough foods, which are listed in separate Wikipedia articles. It also does not list foods in which bread is an ''ingredient'' which is ...
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List of foods named after people
*
List of toast dishes
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List of twice-baked foods
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Mrs. Cubbison's Foods
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Old London Foods
References
Breads
Twice-baked goods
Toast dishes
Nellie Melba
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