Melba Peach

Desserts

White peaches poached in vanilla syrup, laid over vanilla ice cream, with a sharp vivid raspberry purée and a scatter of toasted almonds. This is Escoffier's original recipe, created at the Savoy in the 1890s for opera singer Nellie Melba. It's a desserts that looks like barely any effort and tastes completely extraordinary.

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 2 hours hrs 35 minutes mins

Servings 4

Ingredients 

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• 4 white peaches ripe
• 500 ml water
• 500 gr caster sugar
• 1 vanilla pod split and scraped
• 250 raspberries fresh
• 50 gr icing sugar sifted
• 4 scoops vanilla ice cream
• 30 gr flaked almonds

Equipment

large saucepan

sieve

frying pan

skimmer spoon

dessert bowls

Instructions

Make the vanilla syrup

• Combine 500 milliliters water and 500 grams caster sugar in a wide saucepan with the 1 vanilla pod, split and scraped. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely.

Peel the peaches

• Pee the peaches, halve them and remove the stones.
If the skin doesn't come off easily, you can score a small cross in the base of each peach. Lower them into boiling water for 30 seconds, then transfer immediately to ice-cold water.

Poach and chill the peaches

• Place the peach halves cut-side down in the simmering syrup and poach gently for 8–10 minutes, until just tender but still holding their shape. Remove with a slotted spoon, ladle over a little syrup, and leave to cool completely. Refrigerate until properly cold.

Make the raspberry purée

• Press 250 grams fresh raspberries through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. Stir in 50 grams icing sugar, sifted to taste. The sauce should be smooth, vivid red, and sharp. Keep chilled.

Toast the almonds

• Toast 30 grams flaked almonds in a dry pan over medium heat until lightly golden. Set aside to cool.

Assemble and serve

• Place a large scoop of vanilla ice cream in a chilled coupe or dessert bowl. Arrange two cold peach halves alongside. Spoon the raspberry purée over the peaches at the table and scatter with toasted almonds.

Notes

• Escoffier’s recipe calls for white peaches specifically. Their flavour is more delicate and perfumed than yellow. But obviously, yellow ones are fine too!
• Multiple sources confirm there is no whipped cream in the original Peach Melba, including a direct quote from Le Guide Culinaire page 851. However, it does sound tasty and you won’t hurt the honor of Escoffier if you do.
• The syrup is equal parts water and sugar by volume which is richer than standard. And don’t throw it away after you poached your peaches! It’s beautifully perfumed with vanilla and peach. Bottle it, refrigerate it, and use it in cocktails or with sparkling water over ice.
• The raspberry purée is raw, don’t cook it. Raw keeps the colour vivid and the flavour clean and bright. The Escoffier museum in Villeneuve-Loubet confirms it was always “purée de framboises fraîches.”
• The almonds. Confirmed by Marco Pierre White’s account in White Heat, which draws directly on Escoffier’s method, you should scatter the almonds, don’t pile them.
• The peaches need at least 2 hours in the fridge after poaching, ideally longer. Everything should be cold: peaches, purée, bowls if you can manage it. The contrast between cold fruit and cold ice cream is what makes it special.

About this recipe

A Melba peach dessert is only a couple of ingredients, which you would think won’t be that amazing, until you taste it! Melba peach, or as we say in France the “Pêche Melba” is I think a bit of a misunderstood French dessert, and it deserves better than the cream-smothered versions you often get served in restaurants, which you clearly don’t need if you pick a good quality vanilla ice cream.

The classic peach Melba is delicious, outrageously perfumed, and the perfect French summer dessert to serve your guests, or yourself. It’s the perfect combination of poached white peach, proper vanilla ice cream, a raw raspberry purée that’s sharp and vivid and completely alive with a scatter of toasted almonds to finish it. That’s it. And I know that sounds almost too simple to bother with, but trust me on this: when it’s made properly, from good ingredients in season, it is genuinely one of the best things to wake up your taste buds. I make it every summer and I would receive complaints from my husband if I stopped.

Where peach melba comes from

The history of this Melba peach dessert is a romantic one. In 1892, Auguste Escoffier was chef at the Savoy Hotel in London. Dame Nellie Melba, the Australian soprano and one of the most famous singers in the world at the time, was performing Wagner’s Lohengrin at Covent Garden. The Duke of Orléans, completely charmed by her performance, threw a dinner in her honour at the Savoy.

Escoffier created a dessert for the occasion, and for her. His original ice cream Melba was presented inside an extraordinary ice sculpture of a swan, draped with spun sugar. The swan was a direct reference to the swan in Lohengrin. He called it “pêche au cygne,”. It was theatrical, beautiful, but completely impractical for a full dining room.

By 1899, when he moved to the Carlton Hotel and officially put the recipe on the menu, the swan and the spun sugar had gone. The classic peach melba as we know it had arrived, it was clean, simple and truly perfect. That’s the version he wrote into Le Guide Culinaire in 1903, and that’s the recipe I’m giving you here.

Who was Nellie Melba?

Nellie Melba was born Helen Porter Mitchell in Melbourne in 1861. She became one of the greatest sopranos of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, performing at Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, and the Met in New York. She was eventually made a Dame, and she was, by all accounts, an absolute force of nature.

She also had the unusual distinction of inspiring two separate famous foods. Melba Peach, obviously. And also the Melba toast, the thin crisp dry toast Escoffier created for her during an illness at the Savoy. She was clearly someone who brought out the best in chefs.

What makes a proper melba peach

Escoffier was specific: white peaches only. Not yellow, not nectarines, not tinned fruit. Real white peaches, in season, poached gently in a 50/50 vanilla syrup until just tender. The white peach has a softer, more perfumed flavour than yellow varieties, floral and delicate in a way that pairs beautifully with vanilla. Yellow peaches are a substitution, they’ll do in a pinch, but I do recommend to find the white ones for this recipe.

When can you find white peaches? The season is roughly mid-June to mid-September in France. So yes, this is a summer recipe. Make it in February and you’ll wonder what the fuss is about. Make it in August with a perfectly ripe white peach and you’ll completely understand why Escoffier named it after the most famous soprano in Europe.

The ice cream question

The ice cream matters enormously in this recipe because it carries a third of the flavour in this dish. So take your time on finding proper ice cream. Turn the tubs over and check the ingredients: if glucose-fructose syrup appears, put it back immediately. Good vanilla ice cream is made from milk, cream, sugar, and real vanilla. That’s it. A pale, airy, supermarket vanilla will let everything else down. Go for something dense, rich, and properly vanilla. Make your own if you have time. You want it cold and intensely flavoured, so it holds its own against the sharp raspberry purée.

What restaurants serve vs the classic peach Melba

Walk into most restaurants and order peach melba and you’ll get something with whipped cream on top, possibly flaked almonds buried underneath it, maybe a wafer, probably yellow peaches. Sure, it probably taste nice, but it’s not the original classic and already perfect peach Melba.

Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire, page 851, is explicit: no whipped cream. The cream was added later by people trying to stretch portions or make plates look more impressive. What it actually does is soften the contrast that makes this dessert so extraordinary. The whole point of a Melba ice cream is that sharpness of cold raw raspberry against cold sweet vanilla ice cream against cool, fragrant, yielding poached peach. Cream blurs all of that, I recommend to leave it out completely.

The flaked almonds are correct, confirmed by period accounts, and they actually add to the complex flavours. A little crunch with a faint bitterness right at the end. They finish the whole dessert beautifully.

Why you should make this right now

If it’s July, August, or early September, and you can find white peaches, make this today. It takes about twenty minutes of actual work, most of the time is chilling, and the result is a dessert that will make people ask you for the recipe. The original peach melba has survived over 130 years for a reason!