Dame Nellie Melba: a toast to the voice that inspired four dishes

Dame Nellie Melba in full diva style.

In the case of eponymous food and drink --that is, foods that are named after people-- some names are more well-known than others. Few would question the inspiration behind, say, Napoleon Brandy or the Victoria sponge cake. In fact, the people are probably better-known than the products they inspired.

That's not the case with Dame Nellie Melba, a woman who inspired no fewer than four recipes, including melba toast. While most everyone is familiar with the thin, crisp soup and salad accompaniment, Dame Melba herself is largely forgotten outside of her native Australia.

Born Helen Porter Mitchell, the soprano took the name Melba --a tribute to her birthplace in Melbourne-- when she took to the stage, becoming one of the most famous voices of the Victorian era and early 20th century, as well as one of the most larger-than-life celebrities of the time.

Her effortless coloratura voice helped popularize opera to the masses in Europe and the US, and from the time of her 1888 London debut at Covent Garden, Nellie Melba became a regular there, as well as at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House. The first Australian classic musician to gain international fame, Dame Melba was also one of the first stage performers to receive the Order of the British Empire.

Peach melba: fit for a Dame. (Robbie Sproule: Creative Commons)

In Melba's day, opera divas didn't just rub elbows with royalty, they were treated like royalty themselves, and Dame Nellie insisted upon it. Her home in London was refurbished to look like the palace at Versailles, and her private train car was continuously stocked with her favorite foods: fresh caviar and plover's eggs.

It seems fitting that a grand personality like Nellie Melba should be immortalized by a chef like Auguste Escoffier, an icon himself, and the first chef to receive the French L'égion d'Honneur. Of all the dishes he created in homage to Nellie Melba, though, the peach melba seems most appropriate to the diva.

While performing Wagner's Lohengrin in London, she was honored with a dinner party by the Duke of Orléans, for which Escoffier created a masterpiece of a dessert. A swan carved out of ice (representing the swan in Lohengrin) bore the confection, consisting of peaches on vanilla ice cream with an elaborate spun sugar topping. Thus, peach melba entered the culinary world.

Years later, Escoffier recreated the recipe for the opening of the Carlton Hotel in 1900, but this time with a twist (besides the omission of the giant ice-swan). He topped the peaches with purée of raspberries and redcurrants: melba sauce, which today tops everything from pound cake to puddings.

Nellie Melba in character.

The melba garniture which bears the name of Dame Nellie Melba is also relevantly rich: chicken, truffles and mushrooms stuffed into tomato cups and enrobed in velouté sauce. With three quite decadent dishes made in honor of the legendary soprano, it begs the question: how did something as humble as melba toast come to so famously bear her name?

It didn't. At least, not at first. Melba toast was first called "toast Marie," when Escoffier invented it for the wife of hotelier César Ritz. The obviously particular Marie complained that toast was never quite thin enough for her exacting taste, and the chef obliged.

Later, Nellie Melba found herself recuperating from an illness at the Savoy Hotel in London, and finding toast more digestible than the former diet of caviar and eggs, was presented with the dish that is now formerly known as "toast Marie." It has been known as melba toast ever since. The better-known diva rules, after all.

After a series of farewell tours, Dame Nellie Melba died in 1931 at the age of 69, following an infection that is widely rumored to have been the result of a facelift. Her death made headlines all over the world, and billboards proclaimed simply: "Melba is dead."

Everyone knew which Melba they meant.

While today Dame Nellie Melba is remembered by the Australians as a historically important woman (and the face of the 100 dollar note), and by opera buffs as one of the greatest legends of her time, to most of us she lives on in what can only be described as a culinary immortality.

Video: Dame Nellie Melba sings "Claire de Lune" in an audio recording made in 1926, when she was 65 years old.

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