Everyone eats melba toast when they're ill

[ProbablyLate]

When I was young if I ever had a day off school poorly, mum would make me homemade melba toast by cutting the crusts off some bread, toasting it, then slicing it in half horizontally (like making two thinner slices) then grill it with what had been the inside of the toast slice up so it curled up.

I thought, until yesterday, that this was a perfectly standard off-ill delicacy and offered to make some for DH if he had a bad reaction to his vaccine. He was perplexed by the concept and consultation with a wider group suggests this was not as common a practice as I had been led to believe.

So two questions for you all:

1. Is homemade melba toast something that for you goes hand in hand with a day off ill?
2. If not did your parents/carers have any special recipes reserved for the suffering?!

@JaceLancs

Chicken soup or rice pudding if ill Ice cream for a sore throat Brandy n sugar in hot water for stomach ache Whisky n lemon in water with honey for a cold

My mum just gave me the brandy straight of a spoon. She sometimes might have mixed in a little sugar to help the medicine go down

@MacCoffee my mum weaned me on that egg in a cup. Fellow northerner here.

1. potentially may have eaten it as a child but my mum was a bit odd like that.

2. My go to illness foods are toast (Warburton Orange loaf only,) Bovril or Oxo in hot water for beef tea, orange lucozade and chicken noodle soup.

We had Lucozade and Ribena too

Never heard of egg in a cup

Nausea - nothing and then when I start to feel better toast and crisps

Sore throat/cold - tomatoe soup with bread

@Camomila

We never had it as an "ill food" , ours were crackers and Canada Dry ginger ale, or grated apple with lemon and sugar.

Hot water with honey and lemon to drink.

Soda crackers? For us it was soda crackers and ginger ale. If I kept that down, Campbell's chicken noodle soup.

Melba toast was made for the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba when she was sick at the Savoy hotel. She seemed to have liked to have things named after her!

My mum made melba toast when we were having pate but not when we were ill.

Heinz tomato soup, or a flat meat and potato pie from greggs. God, I miss those pies.

I guess that a dry cracker or two is just as good too. (Most of mine end up stale though! )

I wonder if Canadian, or North American, melba toast is different? It was really thin, thinner than zwieback, I believe.

I remember it being only a food for people on diets.

No to melba toast. We had marmite soldiers or chicken soup.

No but I have vaguely heard of it.

It was dry toast in my house. And we were grateful

Lucozade every time!

God I love Melba Toast! We used to have it at a hotel we stayed at every year in Newquay when I was a child. If you put proper butter on it, the ratio of crispness to butteriness is second to none.
Really want some now, but no bread in the house!

Was always Heinz tomato soup for me too
Lucozade to drink
For a sore throat my gran would give me butter rolled in sugar to dissolve in my mouth

Nope - Scrambled egg on toast.
Or chocolate.

No Melba toast.

Egg in cup. Flat minerals.
There was a packet of glucose powder. We got teaspoon or 2 of that added to orange juice.

When weren't sick had Heinz tomato soup with the top of the milk swirled through. I can't recreate it. Think they've taken too much salt out of the recipe and it is too sweet. Might have always been that sweet!

1 no
2 Heinz cream of tomato soup with a toast cheese sandwich, not a toasted sandwich buttered toast with grated cheese inside. If the cheese is melted it's too greasy and is the bread isn't toasted it's too mushy/claggy. Also original lucozade in a glass bottle.

DH had never had this until he was ill and I made it for him, he now has it any time he's slightly under the weather and sometimes just for lunch if he's having a bad day. Proven medicinal benefits.

I've never even heard of it

Lucozade in the glass bottle with orange plastic-y wrapping!

Lucozade and complan saw me through whooping cough, measles and mumps in the 80s (it was proper lucozade and not this nonsense you get today)

Homemade melba toast was my teenage drunk food. My friends and I would stand about in my friend’s kitchen making melba toast at 3am.

Ill food was Heinz tomato soup and lucozade.

Oh and Andrew’s liver salts if my Nan had a hand in it….!

I always thought melba toast had something to do with peaches... not sure why.