Who invented eggs Benedict?
Eggs Benedict comes from New York in the late 1800s, and two stories claim it. One credits Delmonico's and a regular named Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, the other a stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict at the Waldorf in 1894.
Eggs BenedictTwo (the usual brunch plate)700kcal
New York at the end of the 1800s
Eggs Benedict is poached eggs and ham or Canadian bacon on an English muffin, with hollandaise poured over the top. Hollandaise is a sauce of egg yolks, butter and lemon juice or vinegar. Everyone agrees the dish was born in New York City in the late 1800s. Where exactly, and for whom, is where the arguing starts. Two famous restaurants have a claim, and both stories feature a customer called Benedict.
The Delmonico's story
Delmonico's opened in 1837 and is often called the earliest fine dining restaurant in the United States. Its chef, Charles Ranhofer, published a huge cookbook called The Epicurean in 1894. In it is a recipe for eggs a la Benedick, and the dish is credited to a regular, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict. The story goes that she asked the kitchen for something new. Britannica notes that some accounts say the patron was Mr. Benedict, and that some date it to the 1860s instead.
The hangover at the Waldorf
The other story only reached print in December 1942, in The New Yorker. A retired Wall Street broker named Lemuel Benedict told the magazine he had walked into the Waldorf Hotel in 1894 with a hangover. He ordered buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs and a hooker of hollandaise. The maitre d', Oscar Tschirky, liked it enough to put it on the menu, swapping in ham and an English muffin. It is a good story, but that 1942 interview is the main evidence for it.
So who was first
Nobody can say for sure. The paper trail slightly favours Delmonico's, because Ranhofer printed his recipe in 1894, nearly fifty years before Lemuel told his version. A New York newspaper also mentioned eggs a la Benedict on a lunch menu in January 1894. But a recipe in a book does not prove who ordered it first, and memories of a hungover morning are hard to check. Both stories are still told, and both restaurants are part of the legend.
Brunch everywhere
Whoever started it, eggs Benedict became the standard order at brunch, far beyond New York. The base stays the same: a toasted English muffin, ham or Canadian bacon, a poached egg and hollandaise. A typical plate is two halves, so two eggs and two muffin halves. The muffin, the egg and the sauce are the part that stays, whatever goes under the egg.