Dame Melba, You’re a Peach
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
At the A.O.C. Bedford, the European bistro in the West Village, the staff puts on a grand display of preparing crêpe Suzette tableside.
“Mmmm, delicious,” my friend Ruth said, enjoying the Grand Marnier-accented dessert at the end of a recent dinner. “My compliments to Suzette.” Then she paused for a moment, our eyes met, and we both said, almost simultaneously, “Who was Suzette, anyway?”
I realized I had no idea. Thus began my foray into the history of dishes named after particular people, a practice as old as the Earl of Sandwich and as familiar as a Shirley Temple. Crêpe Suzette, peach Melba, bananas Foster — these names have been so thoroughly assimilated into the culinary lexicon that most of us have never stopped to think about their origins. And that’s a shame, because most of them have good stories behind them.
As it turns out, Suzette is one of the trickier food name inspirations to track down. The person usually credited with creating the dish back in 1895 — Henri Carpentier, a 14-year-old assistant waiter at the Café de Paris in Monte Carlo — always maintained that he inadvertently came up with the flambé-based preparation when a dessert he was making for the Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII of England) caught fire. He initially named it for the prince, who then supposedly asked that it be renamed in honor of his companion that evening, a young woman named Suzette. But other accounts dispute this, and many historians have been skeptical that a teenage assistant would have been assigned to wait on the Prince in the first place. Either way, the full identity of Suzette has never been clear.
The derivations of several other name-based dishes, however, are easier to trace. Here’s a selective rundown:
PEACH MELBA The great French chef Auguste Escoffier created this wonderful dessert for the Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, possibly at London’s Savoy Hotel in 1892 or ’93, although the precise time and place are matters of some dispute. Dame Melba was reputed to love ice cream but rarely indulged in it because she worried it would damage her vocal cords. Escoffier’s plan was to create a dish in which ice cream was only one element among several — in this case, peaches and a raspberry-currant sauce — so that it wouldn’t be so cold and Melba could enjoy it without fearing for her voice. Melba was also the inspiration for melba toast, making her a rare two-time culinary eponym.
BANANAS FOSTER It’s not often that an awning magnate becomes immortalized in gastronomic history, but that’s what happened in 1951 to Richard Foster, owner of the Foster Awning Company. Mr. Foster was a regular customer at the New Orleans restaurant Brennan’s and served with its owner, Owen Edward Brennan, on the New Orleans Crime Commission. When Holiday magazine was preparing an article on the restaurant and asked for a recipe, Brennan’s chef came up with a combination of bananas, butter, brown sugar, rum, and vanilla ice cream, which Brennan then named after his good friend. According to the restaurant’s Web site, it now goes through 35,000 pounds of bananas each year. No word on the awning, though.
OYSTERS ROCKEFELLER Another New Orleans creation, this one concocted in 1899 by Jules Alciatore of Antoine’s, who turned his attention to oysters when faced with a shortage of imported snails. The topping he came up with — the precise components of which remain a closely guarded Antoine’s secret, although most knockoff versions include chopped spinach or watercress, butter, bread crumbs, and seasonings — was so rich that he named it after America’s richest man, John D. Rockefeller.
LOBSTER NEWBERG This dish, which was first served at Delmonico’s in Manhattan in the 1870s, was originally called lobster à la Wenberg — a nod to Ben Wenberg, the sea captain who introduced the recipe to Charles Delmonico. The two men later had a falling out, leading Wenberg to demand that the dish be removed from the menu. When customers kept asking for it, the restaurant surreptitiously brought it back, switching the n and the w in Wenberg’s name.
EGGS BENEDICT Delmonico’s may also have been where this classic breakfast dish first appeared. According to one story, the restaurant’s chef, Charles Ranhofer, came up with the dish in the 1880s for financier LeGrand Benedict and his wife after they complained that there was nothing new on the menu. Other historians point to stockbroker Lemuel Benedict, who found himself one morning at the Waldorf hotel with a terrible hangover and ordered a breakfast of toast, bacon, eggs, and a side of hollandaise sauce. According to this version, the maître d’ substituted English muffins and Canadian bacon, and eggs Benedict was born.
GENERAL TSO’S CHICKEN Arguably the holy grail of eponymous foods, the story behind this Chinese restaurant staple is the source of near-endless debate among foodies. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that there was indeed a real General Tso Tsungtang (or Zuo Zongtang as his name would be spelled today), who lived between 1812 and 1885. But he almost certainly never ate the dish named for him, and it’s unclear how or when the name came about. Several Manhattan restaurants, including Shun Lee Palace and the now-defunct Peng’s, have claimed credit for coming up with the recipe, but nobody has offered a plausible explanation for the name. Of course, the bigger mystery is why General Tso’s chicken is always listed as a higher-priced “House Specialty” when it’s so easy and inexpensive to make.
There’s more: Béchamel sauce, named after a 17th-century French courtier, Louis de Béchameil; pizza Margherita, after Margherita of Savoy, the Italian Queen consort during the reign of Humbert I in the late 1800s; tarte Tatin, after the French Tatin sisters, who served it at their hotel in the 1880s, and many others.
As for crêpes Suzette, Henri Charpentier always stuck to his story of creating the dish for the Prince of Wales. “Thus was born and baptized this confection,” he wrote in his autobiography,”one taste of which, I really believe, would reform a cannibal into a civilized gentleman.” Or a prince’s dinner date into a culinary namesake.