Peach Melba is a dessert of peaches and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream. It was invented in 1892 or 1893 by the French chef Auguste Escoffier at the Savoy Hotel, London, to honour the Australian soprano Nellie Melba.

Nellie Melba was performing in Wagner’s opera Lohengrin at Covent Garden. The Duke of Orléans gave a dinner party at the Savoy to celebrate her triumph. For the occasion, Escoffier presented Nellie with a dessert of fresh peaches served over vanilla ice cream in a silver dish perched atop an ice sculpture of a swan, which is featured in the opera. He originally called the dish Pêche au cygne, or “peach with a swan.”

A few years later Escoffier created a new version of the dessert: when Escoffier and César Ritz opened the Ritz Carlton in London (after both were sacked from the Savoy for larceny, embezzlement, and fraud), Escoffier changed the recipe slightly by adding a topping of sweetened raspberry purée and renamed the dish Pêche Melba.

Info and image from Wikipedia