The tradition & historical record
2 min read · 2 sourcesMelba toast is a dry, crisp and thinly sliced rusk, often served with soup and salad or topped with either melted cheese or pâté. It is named after Dame 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 hers, Auguste Escoffier, who also created the peach Melba 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. 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 the UK, this is similar to a commercial product known as French toast, although it is very different from the egg-based dish known as French toast in the USA. In France, it is referred to as croutes en dentelle. 1
History
In 1925, the Mayo Brothers prescribed the "Eighteen Day Reducing Diet" to Ethel Barrymore. It included Melba toast, which made the toast very popular at the time. Melba toast was also eaten as a component of the Banting diet. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Melba toast”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Melba toast is dry, crisp, thinly sliced toast, often served with soup and salad or topped with either melted cheese or pâté, named after Nellie Melba, invented by Auguste Escoffier, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 5 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2