You might think the perfect breakfast/lunch/brunch dish is Eggs Benedict, and if toney Bed and Breakfast Inns are any indication, you would be right.  The menus at these upscale weekend hideaways often feature Eggs Benedict -- sometimes replacing the  traditional ham or Canadian bacon with a local delicacy, perhaps smoked salmon or fresh fish or crab or cheese or spinach or asparagus or a slice of home-grown tomato.   At any rate, it's Eggs Benedict that's guaranteed to make you feel pampered enough to fork over a couple of hundred dollars to be in an old-fashioned bedroom in an out-of-the-way spot as a change from your usual routine.

What they are selling of course is the kind of care you don't ordinarily take at home,  because making Eggs Benedict means you  have to poach a couple of eggs just to runny consistency, lightly grill thin slices of Canadian bacon, tenderly toast two sides of a fork-opened English muffin and then whip up some delicate lemony hollandaise sauce to pour over it all.  And all that for just one per person.   A click on the photograph above will take you to one way to do it on your own.  It's the only recipe I know of that combines the traditional ingredients with microwave cooking and, claiming to be a "perfect" recipe, it comes from The Ladies Home Journal website.

However, considering where this dish might have originated, I have for many years believed the traditional story that a "Mrs. Le Grand  Benedict" suggested the luscious combination to the chef at the old Delmonico's Restaurant in New York.  However, I could never find a clue as to who she was and how and when it happened.  Recently, though, I stumbled upon a web page devoted to the question, What is Eggs Benedict?  On his page, Josh Karpf repeats the traditional story, but he also includes a Feedback page where a web-surfer named Cutts Benedict of Watkinsville, Georgia, tells a story different enough to be worthy of attention.

According to Cutts Benedict, the dish was named for his father's cousin, Lemuel Benedict,  and Lemuel's story was recounted in a New Yorker interview in December, 1942. The name "Lemuel" sounded too close to "LeGrand" to be accidental, so I located a library with a microfiche reproduction of the magazine, and looked up the fifty-seven year-old interview.  There it was, in the weekly "Talk of the Town" column, an interview with the retired Wall Street stock broker who wandered into the Waldorf Hotel in 1894, hoping for a cure for his morning hangover.  The old Waldorf, which stood where the Empire State Building stands now, had a famous head waiter, or maitre d'hotel.  In fact, you might say Oscar Tschirky invented the job of "maitre d' " as Americans thought of it in the last century.  Lemuel ordered "buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon and a hooker of hollandaise."   He got what he wanted, but when "Oscar of the Waldorf" thought to put the unusual combination on the hotel's breakfast and luncheon menu, he improved it with ham and a recently-introduced delicacy from England, the English muffin.  And he named it for the young man with the hangover and the culinary imagination.

So there it is.  Human nature being what it is, I believe that in the re-telling over the years, the name Lemuel became LeGrand  and the Waldorf Hotel became Delmonico's Restaurant, which is where Oscar Tschirky worked as a waiter before he became maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf.  Today, you can see a three-million dollar tribute to Oscar Tschirky in the refurbishment of the present day Waldorf-Astoria Hotel's coffee shop, appropriately named "Oscar's."

If, upon reading this account, you simply must have a dish of Eggs Benedict, here's a way to do it.

Put about three inches of water in a ten inch skillet, and bring to a boil; add a tablespoon of cider vinegar.  Break the eggs, one at a time, into a custard cup or saucer and carefully slip them into the water.  Cover the skillet with a lid or baking sheet and turn off the heat. Now arrange the toasted muffins on a plate and place the ham or Canadian bacon on top of each muffin half.  After exactly three minutes, remove the lid of the skillet, and, using a slotted spoon, lift each egg from the water, letting it drain briefly over the skillet before placing it on the ham and toasted English muffin.  Pour Hollandaise Sauce over all.

Hollandaise Sauce
(adapted from Pat in Tokyo)

1/4 lb. stick of butter, cut in half, crosswise
2 egg yolks
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Place egg yolks in small saucepan or double boiler .
Whisk in the lemon juice and turn heat down to lowest temperature.
Place tip of spoon over and into half of the stick of butter, and, using the stick of butter like a spoon, stir it into the the mixture.  When the butter is melted in, repeat with the remaining half stick of butter.  Be sure to keep the heat low.  If not, it will curdle, but if it curdles, use Julia Child's "trick":  take a large clean bowl, and add 2 tablespoons of water to it.  Slowly whisk the curdled sauce into the water, and it will re-assemble.
 

Who Cooked That Up? is copyrighted 1999 by J.J. Schnebel
Revised February 2002
all rights reserved for your pleasure and enlightenment

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