Eggs Benedict Day

What the day is

Eggs Benedict Day is observed on April 16. The dish is a toasted English muffin half, Canadian bacon or ham, a poached egg, and hollandaise sauce over the top.

Everything about it is straightforward except the sauce, which is why it is a restaurant order more often than a home breakfast.

Origin and background

Two New York origin stories compete, and neither has been settled.

The first places it at Delmonico's in the 1860s, where a regular customer named Benedict reportedly asked for something new and the chef Charles Ranhofer produced a version that later appeared in his cookbook.

The second credits Lemuel Benedict, a stockbroker who in 1894 ordered buttered toast, bacon, poached eggs and hollandaise at the Waldorf as a hangover cure. The hotel's maitre d'hotel is said to have adopted it, substituting the muffin and ham. Benedict told this version himself decades later, in a magazine interview, which is rather late evidence.

Hollandaise is one of the classical French mother sauces, and it is an emulsion: egg yolk holding melted butter in suspension, sharpened with lemon or vinegar. Emulsions are unstable by nature. Too much heat scrambles the yolk, butter added too fast will not incorporate, and either failure makes the sauce split into greasy liquid.

The variations follow a pattern: smoked salmon instead of ham makes it Royale, spinach makes it Florentine, crab cakes make it Chesapeake.

How to take part

• Poach eggs in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar, and use the freshest eggs you can. Older whites spread instead of holding together.
• Poach them ahead into ice water, then reheat briefly in hot water when assembling. This is how restaurants serve four plates at once.
• Make the hollandaise over a bain-marie, off direct heat, adding warm melted butter in a thin stream while whisking constantly.
• If it splits, whisk a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it slowly. It usually comes back.
• Toast the muffin properly. A soft base collapses under the sauce.