Benedict And Eggs. The History Of One Dish

On a Sunday morning for a brunch, you want something “sort of” - simple, but refined, light, but satisfying.

 

On a Sunday morning for a brunch, you want something “sort of” - simple, but refined, light, but satisfying. We offer to cook at home or taste in the restaurant Eggs Benedict. Soft bun, crispy bacon, tender poached egg and sour hollandaise sauce - what could be better? Only a cup of coffee after such a wonderful breakfast! We tell you where eggs Benedict came from and how to cook them at home.

Hangover cure or desire for something new?

It is always very difficult to establish the author of popular dishes. Often there are several "discoverers" who attribute authorship to themselves. With Eggs Benedict, all that is clear is that they originated in New York. True, "Wikipedia" indicates France under the country of origin. This is because the best restaurants in Paris have included Eggs Benedict on the menu and they have become incredibly popular. In any case, this dish is known on both sides of Atlanta, and Eggs are made using English muffin, Canadian bacon, hollandaise sauce and granny's - fresh and organic - eggs. Cosmopolitan, I'm not a dish!

So, here are the versions of the appearance of the recipe for Eggs Benedict indicated on the Internet.

One clear morning in 1894, an American broker named Lemuel Benedict was dying of a hangover. He wandered down Fifth Avenue, bowed himself and passers-by, and decided that he would find a cure for his illness at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The broker, despite having a headache this morning, turned out to be a creative guy and ordered "buttered toast, two shelled boiled eggs, bacon and hollandaise sauce." The dish impressed Oscar Chirki, the head waiter of the restaurant, who subsequently introduced the dish to the morning and lunch menu. Almost half a century later, Lemuel told this story to The New Yorker, however, history is silent about whether the broker managed to cope with a hangover.

According to another version, O. Chirki himself invented the recipe for the dish, however, instead of toast, he used an English yeast bun, and instead of bacon, he used ham. The bun is still the basis of Eggs Benedict.

Third version: cherchet la femme. We don’t know how it is with amorous affairs, but the woman in the origin of Benedict’s Eggs is definitely involved. In 1860, at Delmonico's New York restaurant, Mrs. Benedict wanted something she didn't know what. She ended up asking for a "new off-menu" item, which she's already tried far and wide. The chefs had to work hard and respect the rich client. True, according to some sources, Mr. Benedict had a "crisis" and it was he who wanted "something unknown." In any case, thank you to each and every one of them for making it possible for us to enjoy Eggs Benedict today.

 

Recipe

Ingredients (per serving):

English muffin

two eggs

a few pieces of ham or bacon

For hollandaise sauce (hollandaise) you will need: four egg yolks, 150 g of oil, a little water (2-3 tablespoons), one teaspoon of white wine vinegar, lemon juice, a pinch of salt and black pepper.

Cooking:

1. First - hollandaise sauce. Place a small bowl over a pot of boiling water (it should not touch the water). Pour water and vinegar into a bowl, heat. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice (half a lemon), add the yolks with melted butter. Mix well. 2. Pour water into a deep frying pan or wide pan, measure 5 cm from the base by eye. Bring to a boil. Pour in the vinegar - the water should be sour. Stir the water in the pan with a spoon so that it "swirls". Whilst the water is “spinning”, beat in the eggs, continue to work with the spoon and “swirl”. Boil for three minutes. The protein should be cooked, but the yolk should remain liquid! 3. Fry the bacon separately. It is better for beginners to use ham - it does not need to be fried, and it will not work right away to cook poached eggs at the same time. Fry the English muffin in the oil as well, cutting it in half. 4. We assemble the dish: put bacon or ham on two halves of the fried bun, then on the egg and pour the hollandaise sauce. Ready!

Ideally, your poached eggs should “get to the point” along with the bun and ham. Orgasm is achieved at the moment when you pierce an egg with a fork, send a bun with bacon and spreading hot yolk into your mouth.

Numerous "clones"

Eggs Benedict is cooked everywhere and is actively "cloned" by adding vegetables, changing the sauce, offering a vegetarian version, and so on. Most often, ham is replaced with something else. The salmon version is called Hemingway Eggs. With crab meat - Eggs Shakespeare. If we add asparagus to the crab, we get Oscar Eggs. You can cook a dish with portobello mushrooms, respectively, and the name is Portobello Benedict. In Latin America, avocados are used instead of ham, and hollandes are replaced with salsa verde. A simplified version - rustic or Eggs Beauregard - looks like this: biscuit, sausages, rustic sauce and regular scrambled eggs. In other words, our usual breakfast.