Eggs Benedict

"Can there be anybody who doesn't drool at the thought of Eggs Benedict? Soft, squidgy, lightly toasted bread, really crisp bacon and perfectly poached eggs which, when the yolks burst, drift into a cloud of buttery hollandaise sauce. It's certainly one of the world's greatest recipes." Delia Smith

You may remember that when I dined at Second Home recently I chose Our Benedict as for my lunch. At the time I thought that it was probably not quite what Eggs Benedict was supposed to be and I was right - which is not to take away with the enjoyment of what I ate.

But although I thought it was not quite right, I was actually a little bit wrong in may own thinking - because I thought it involved spinach - which, of course, is Eggs Florentine, not Eggs Benedict. Though I notice that Jamie Oliver has spinach in his version. As do many others. Classic dishes tend to be fiddled with - and the simpler the original dish the more people fiddle.

Anyway it festered away in my brain a bit - enough for me to look it up today to see what it should have been and where that name came from anyway. Who or where was Benedict?

The name it seems, like all of these things, is contested. There are a couple of stories - although it does seem to be agreed that this is an American dish - indeed more specifically - a New York dish. The two conflicting stories date from the 19th century. The first is from 1860 in Delmonico's. But this is no more than a claim that it was 'invented in our ovens'. There is no reference to how the name came about - so I'm inclined to ignore this. Mind you I guess the ingredients are a common enough combination so it may be true. The story that is most usually offered up as the 'creation story', most probably because it is just that - a good story - dates back to 1894.

"In an interview recorded in the "Talk of the Town" column of The New Yorker in 1942, the year before his death, Lemuel Benedict, a retired Wall Street stock broker, claimed that he had wandered into the Waldorf Hotel in 1894 and, hoping to find a cure for his morning hangover, ordered "buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of hollandaise". Oscar Tschirky, the famed maître d'hôtel, was so impressed with the dish that he put it on the breakfast and luncheon menus but substituted ham for the bacon and a toasted English muffin for the toast." Wikipedia

So there you have it - English muffins, poached egg, ham and hollandaise sauce. Or should it be toast and bacon? The first three are easy and common - I guess it's the hollandaise sauce that makes it so unique - and so unlikely to be made at home.

So I looked around for the 'knowledge' on what the perfect version should be and found that The Guardian as usual had the perfect lowdown on it all - not from Felicity Cloake this time, but from Tony Naylor in his How to Eat ... series. And I did like his observation that although the ingredients cost a mere £1.50 the going price in England can be as much as £8.95. Mine, I have to say was considerably more - $19.90, but it was quite substantial and a bit fancier. And I will come to it later.

Back to the hollandaise sauce though - the thing that makes it so special, and so potentially off-putting:

"Making hollandaise strikes the fear of Carême into even the most accomplished home cook, and how often do you have the ingredients (pristine fresh eggs, soft muffins) in, when the mood takes you? Moreover, this is an indulgence best enjoyed at a leisurely pace. One where half the pleasure is in letting someone else do the heavy lifting. Therefore, it is best eaten out, rather than at home." Tony Naylor - The Guardian

I think I agree with him, although I do wonder whether I am just put off by the mystique of it all, like I was by risotto - for years. For in another excellent Guardian article from The Delia Project - Learn to Make Eggs Benedict, Stephen Bush claims:

"The good news is, after not much practice, the time it takes to prepare the hollandaise sauce fits exactly into the amount of time you need to leave the poached egg in the hot water, meaning that all your ingredients should be nice and hot when you whack them on a muffin." Stephen Bush - The Guardian

Mind you he does think that her instructions are less than excellent and has a few tips of how own on how to achieve the perfect sauce. I think I'll go with Tony Naylor though and treat this as one of those things I eat when I dine out rather than cook at home. Not that I do brunch out much.

But I did when I went to Second Home. This is their version.

It was not a pure Eggs Benedict because the ham was a shredded ham hock that had been braised and the whole was not on a toasted muffin but on a stack of potatoes - the whole being described thus: "Braised smokey ham hock, crispy potato, thyme and parmesan stack, poached eggs, apple cider hollandaise." Something considerably fancier than the classic version - and probably worth a bit more money.

A final word on the bacon - or ham. The first argument is whether it should be bacon or ham. The second is whether it should be thick or thin, sliced, shredded or chunks, crisp or uncooked. Oh the opportunities for creativity. Mine was 'braised' and 'smokey' - that trendy word again.

Due to the revival in all-day breakfast Eggs Benedict has been revived from a slightly stuffy hotel dish to something trendy and something around which inventive cooks can improvise to their heart's delight. I don't think this is one I shall be trying at home though. Not that I have a really good reason not to. Maybe a poached egg and a tiny bit of ham on a tiny bit of bread on a fasting day?