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?!

It wasn't a regular illness food in our house but my gran loved melba toast and we had it there when we visited . One night I had a terrible bug and felt sick the next day I was v thankful for melba toast as it was all I felt confident eating and keeping down. We were about to go on a holiday and had a 3 hour car journey

No. Not even slightly.

Lemon, honey, hot water, whiskey

Always a bed made up on the couch as well and my nana would buy me a puzzle activity pack to keep me occupied as there was only kids TV on 12-1pm and after school.

Grilled tomatoes on toast still love that if. I’ve been ill. Sometimes Heinz tomato soup with bread and butter cut into triangles or cheese on toast.
Medicine tea which was tea with a teaspoon of whisky and a spoonful of sugar in it, reserved for really bad colds, I still have it although without the sugar.

Hot Ribena and / or Lucozade. Lucozade only has restorative qualities if served from the crinkly wrapper.

Never eaten toast like that before.

Our standard go-to poorly food was boiled eggs and toasty soldiers, or Heinz tomato soup. Unless you were my little sister, who was given the above plus lucozade

Nope, never melba toast.
Hot buttered toast in our house, cut into 3 fingers ( the middle bit was the best), banana custard and hot blackcurrant squash. Yum!

Melba toast attempt update - not attempted yet. BUT I looked on you tube because I couldn’t actually understand how I would end up with what I saw described as melba toast on supermarket sites.
Shocked to see this is melba toast. Thin triangles of toast sliced in half and lit in the oven. Definitely I’ve had this at formal old fashioned dinners 80s/90s. Think what is sold is some kind of dry cracker surely ?

Don’t even know why I was slightly snotty above because heated sliced pitta for dips or a flatbread is not so different.

You're all wrong it's Heinz chicken soup with buttered toast to dip in

1. No
2. Raw egg cracked into a glass of milk. If anything was going to make you get better fast it was that.

No. Only ever had it out of a box. The prospect of being packed off to bed with that spikey stuff in bed would make me buck up sharpish. (Think of the lingering discomfort of the crumbs).
In my day tinned tomato soup, or possibly Baxter's lentil and bacon was the stuff, served with soft white bread slathered in butter.

These days buttered toast with local honey is the choice of our DDS. DH swears by the curative power of a chip butty if he's feeling poorly.

Didn't have melba toast. We were given hot orange squash.

Another one for egg in a cup with toast and tea.

Lucozade that came in bottles like this.

The absolutely amazing thing is we all thought that the sugary laden drink luzocade was actually good for you because it had its own special shelf in the pharmacy and special crinkly wrapping!
Imagine marketing like this these days. It would be pulled apart on Twitter as the nonsense it clearly was, yet we all fell for it.

Hot lemon juice and honey was the drink or hot Ribena. I don’t remember having a special food.

I was given “Maizena” - something made by cooking cornflour with milk and sugar - delicious!

1. No.
2. Old-fashioned Lucozade from the chemist, in a glass bottle with clear orange plastic around it.

Never heard of it

Can’t be bothered to rtft but just to say OP that Melba toast is an absolute family tradition for us, but not for illness, for Xmas and other fancy family dinners. Served with lashings of butter and often pâté. And always a few rounds getting burnt in all the hustle and bustle. Gives me fond memories. For Illness, soup, toast and butter, and coke.

1 No. Never heard of melba toast in my life. Sounds nice though.
2 Mushed up banana with brown sugar.

Our family 'been ill but getting better' foods (I was quite a sicky child!) were butter and marmite on white bread no crusts and 'see if that stayed down.' And if it did... corned beef hash!

Nope. Ordinary toast for me sometimes with marmite.

I actually hadn't heard of Melba toast

1. no but normal toast maybe
2. lucozade back in the day.