For 126 years there is this popular mating of raspberries and skinned peaches, called in the original Peche Melba. Peche as the French word for peach opens up immediately, but what the hell do raspberries have to do with Melba? And where is this ominous Melba anyway? Is it the hamlet with three houses in Mississippi? The marginally larger road in the desert Idahos near the "Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area"? The suburb of Canberra's Belconnen district in Australia? Or even the Melba Peninsula on the coast of the Antarctic Queen Marie Country?

Far from it, because Melba is right in the heart of a chef. More precisely, the penultimate cook of the century: George Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), the founder of how we are still cooked in many fine houses in the world today. This still loved by many stove creators as "king of the cooks" worshiped in turn the singer Helen Mitchell (1861-1931).

She became one of the world's most celebrated sopranos under the pseudonym Nellie Melba, which was inspired by her adopted country Melbourne.

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Recipe for "Peche Melba 2.0": Dessert classic reissued

As head of the noble Savoy Hotel in London, Escoffier invented epoch-making dishes such as Coquelin sole, Homard à l'américaine (lobster in the style of Brittany), poultry à la Derby or pear Helene. After experiencing Melba in 1892 as Elsa in the Wagner opera "Lohengrin" at the Royal Opera House, he took the opportunity to reciprocate with the Diva culinary.

The maître served a skinned and sugared peach half on vanilla ice cream coated with raspberry coulis and topped with cream - and called it "Peche Melba". Whether as a crisp topping almond chips or chopped pistachio kernels over scattered about it argue culinary historians just as vehemently as on the question of whether the story is true at all.

Another variant of the name genesis states that the diva only agreed to the idea after six years of reflection. In any case, it has been proven that Escoffier put his peach creation in 1899 at the newly opened London Carlton Hotel on the map.

What is the peach doing on the swan?

Since then, nothing has changed in the recipe. The instructions have also survived because they are virtually impossible to improve. Whereby it can be fun to turn the set screws - peach, raspberry, vanilla - creatively.

Our "Peche Melba 2.0" also comes with grilled peach slices, a raspberry and basil sorbet, a peach mousse perfumed with vanilla and a coulis with a hint of raspberry spirit.

Only in terms of presentation we can not and do not want to keep up with the historical model. Escoffier was inspired by the Lohengrin scene, in which the Grail Knight Loherangrin, son of the Grail King Parzival, is sent to the Duchess of Brabant as a helper and protector - always accompanied by a white swan. Therefore, the cooking king carved a finely chiseled swan out of a block of ice, placed his dessert in the middle between the wings and served the bird of his adored diva.