Melba toast "Eighteen Day Reducing Diet" to Ethel Barrymore. It included Melba toast, which made the toast very popular at the time. Melba toast 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 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 chef and fan Auguste Escoffier, who also created
Welsh rarebit this; what is more, Ben Jonson died almost a century before the term Welsh rabbit is first attested. According to the American satirist Ambrose Bierce, the continued use of "rarebit" was an attempt to rationalise the absence of rabbit, writing in his 1911 "Devil's Dictionary": "RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad in the hole is really not a toad, and that "ris de veau à la financière" is not the smile of a