Maybe that's why wedding cake is terrible.) (Unhelpfully, the cake is disgusting, but apparently the marriage was happy. And Battenberg cake, a weird criss-cross of pink and white sponge, was created to mark the marriage of a granddaughter of Queen Victoria to Prince Louis of Battenberg. Dame Nellie Melba, one of the world's finest opera singers in the 19th century, knew she'd really made it when Peach Melba was invented for her by the famous chef Escoffier at the Savoy in the 1880s. (Can you imagine a Nicki Minaj? Would it be a balancing collection of voluptuous choux buns?) But it used to be the height of fashion to get yourself a namesake sweet thing on the best menus of the time. The custom of naming deserts for celebrities has, unfortunately, died out. Do you really know the bizarre, inspiring history of your favorite tasty treats? That goes double for the history of desserts, because people the world over are obsessed with sweet things. Several people can invent a recipe at the same time a dish can disappear in one continent and appear, apparently unrelated, on another, decades or centuries later and whenever a recipe is successful, you can count on at least two people squabbling over the rights and glory. Culinary history is often about as murky as a badly-made bone broth.
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