peach melba

1 3.0

A dessert of ice cream and peaches with raspberry sauce

noun
/piːtʃ ˈmɛlbə/

: melba de durazno

The chef served a classic peach melba that delighted all the guests with its sweet flavors.

Examples

I never had any, but I heard the peach melba's absolutely outrageous.

The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007)
She checked Carmen's work of art on the lower shelf: five lotus-shaped stemware pieces filled with peach Melba.

Fiction book (1998)
After dinner, we enjoyed a refreshing peach melba, which was the highlight of the meal.
For dessert, I ordered a peach melba, featuring ripe peaches and creamy vanilla ice cream.

Surface Forms

peach melba singular

peach melbas plural

Morphology

peach + Melba

The presence of 'peach' makes it clear that peaches are involved, but 'Melba' is an eponymic proper name that does not indicate the full composition (ice cream and raspberry sauce). Understanding the specific dessert requires cultural or lexical knowledge about the dish name rather than straightforward composition from the constituent words.

Etymology

Peach melba was created by a chef for a famous 'singer' named Nellie Melba. He served soft peach pieces with vanilla ice cream and a bright raspberry sauce, so the name joins peach and Melba. That's why peach melba now means a 'dessert' of peaches, ice cream and raspberry sauce.