A dessert fit for an opera singer

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In the comments on my post about Vegemite, Porcospino (@Porcospino) mentioned pavlova which I always thought was pretty specific to Australia but it seems New Zealand thought of it first. Anyway I thought I’d write about a few dishes which seem to have originated here or which aren’t mentioned much in the cuisine of other countries. And of course you can always correct me if I’m wrong. Before the pavlova came the Peach Melba which was named after Dame Nellie Melba, a celebrated Australian operatic soprano. In 1892, after her stand-out performance in Wagner’s Lohengrin at Covent Garden, the Duke of Orleans gave a dinner party in her honour. The chef at the Savoy Hotel was Georges Auguste Escoffier who created a new dessert. It was first displayed in an ice sculpture of a swan. A bed of vanilla ice-cream was topped with peaches which were themselves topped with spun sugar. Later the swan was omitted and the peaches topped with raspberry puree. In 1897 Escoffier also created Melba toast. Nellie Melba was born Helen Porter Mitchell in 1861 and became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and one of the first Australians to achieve international recognition in classical music circles. The pseudonym comes from her home town ‘Melbourne’. During World War I she raised large sums for various war charities. Her image is on the Australian $100 note. Image courtesy: Robbie Sproule [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons