Peach Melba Float

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Where have all the floats gone? And no, I’m not talking about flamboyant parade fodder. I’m talking about the ice cream float. When I was a kid in the 90s, I feel like I encountered them far more often. Every diner, dessert counter, or kid-friendly restaurant listed them as an option. But somewhere between the oughts and the 2010s, we lost them. Maybe the thought of ice cream floating in soda was more sugar than the modern stomach could, well, stomach. Or maybe people simply lost interest; the ice cream float has been around since the 1870s, after all. But despite that, here I am with my Peach Melba Float trying to make ice cream floats cool again. And this is going to be a trick considering I don’t have a cool bone in my body. It’s all on you, float!

Pinpointing the beginnings of the ice cream float is tricky. Murky origin stories are incredibly common in food history, but this is one of those rare instances where we can date this dessert to a specific decade: the 1870s. The most widely accepted invention claim details the lemons-to-lemonade story of Robert M Green. Green was a vendor selling flavoured drinks on a particularly hot day in Philadelphia in 1874. Green was doing brisk business when he discovered he was all out of ice. Thinking quickly, Green purchased vanilla ice cream from a fellow vendor and added a scoop to each drink to cool them. And boom! The ice cream float was born. 

There are several other competing stories about the conception of the ice cream float, including one that predates Green’s story by two years. But the validity of any one story isn’t particularly important; It’s the dessert that counts. The dessert is why we’re here. Isn’t it always? 

Today’s Peach Melba Float doesn’t borrow from one iconic dessert but two. The second being the float’s namesake: Peach Melba. Created some 20 years later by the legendary chef Auguste Escoffier, Peach Melba debuted at the Savoy Hotel in London in 1892. The dessert featured fresh peaches served over vanilla ice cream in a silver dish perched atop a swan-shaped ice sculpture. It was created to honour the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, who was performing Wagner’s Lohengrin at Covent Garden at the time.

Due to its extreme presentation, Peach Melba was originally known as “Pêche au cygne”, or “Peach with a swan.” Escoffier recreated the dessert a year later at the newly opened Ritz Carlton, ditching the swan, adding raspberry puree, and renaming the dish Pêche Melba. There’s a whole story about Escoffier and César Ritz opening the Ritz Carlton after they were both fired from the Savoy for apparently committing larceny, embezzlement, and fraud, but that will have to wait for another day. Lol!

In my Peach Melba Float, I marry the two desserts by creating a Fresh Peach Sorbet and an Almond Raspberry Syrup. I place both in a Collins glass and fill to the top with sparkling water. Make sure the glasses are cold, or everything is going to melt a lot faster than you’d like. Essentially what you have is a homemade raspberry soda with hefty scoops of peach sorbet. The treat is finished with unsweetened whipped cream, sliced almonds, and of course, fresh raspberries. I do prefer unsweetened whipped cream as a finisher here, because there are so many sweet elements to this drink. But if you’re not into that, feel free to add a little powdered sugar to your cream before you whip it. 

Would Escoffier approve of my riff on his iconic dish? Probably not. Escoffier stated that “any variation on this (Peach Melba) recipe ruins the delicate balance of its taste.” Oops! Lol! Well, fair enough, sir. I’m almost positive you know better than I. But in my far less seasoned opinion, I think this Peach Melba Float tastes mighty fine.

And that’s everything you need to know about this Peach Melba Float and probably far more than you need to know about ice cream floats and the criminal activities of Escoffier. You can’t say this site isn’t wide-ranging. 

Enjoy!