January 13th is National Peach Melba Day!

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Here are today’s Five Food Finds about Peach Melba:

~Peach Melba, a truly classic dessert made of peaches served with vanilla ice cream, raspberries & sauce.

~Melba toast & Peach Melba are indeed related.

~The dessert was created to celebrate the  famous and slender opera singer, Nellie Melba in 1892.

~It is said when she gained weight in her later career the same chef created a thin baked toast for her diet, Melba toast.

~Other versions of this dessert use pears, apricots, or strawberries instead of peaches and / or use raspberry sauce or melted red currant jelly instead of raspberry purée.

On This Day in Food History…

1808 Salmon Portland Chase was born. He was Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, and later Chief Justice.

1921 Pierre Franey was born. A French chef who became famous as the chef of ‘Le Pavillon’ restaurant in New York City from 1945 to 1960. He published several cookbooks and collaborated with Craig Claiborne on the New York Times food column, ‘The 60 Minute Gourmet’.

1957 The Frisbee was invented. The pie tins of the Frisbee Pie Company of Connecticut were the inspiration for the creation of the Frisbee. A Wham-O employee supposedly saw drivers for the pie company showing Yale students how to throw the pie tins.

1962 Ernie Kovacs, innovative comedian, died. One of Kovacs’ first TV appearances was in Philadelphia in 1950 with a chef, Albert Mathis from the Gulph Mills Country Club, in a live unrehearsed cooking show titled ‘Deadline for Dinner.’

1968 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Gladys Knight & Pips is #1 on the charts.

2002 U.S. President George W. Bush fainted after choking on a pretzel

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