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Philadelphia Eggs
Split some fresh muffins in two, toast them to a fine color and lay them on a dish. Cut some cooked chicken white meat the same size as the half muffins, lay them on top, then a poached egg over, and cover with Hollandaise sauce, made as follows: Melt a quarter of a pound of fresh butter and when quite hot add two raw egg yolks and the juice of half a lemon; whip well till it becomes creamy and consistent, then use.
How to Poach Eggs Put a gallon of water in a saucepan on the fire to boil gently, adding a large pinch of salt. When the water boils, break in eight eggs very delicately, without injuring the yolks, and leave them to cook for a few minutes; lift them out with a skimmer and serve on toasts, or otherwise, while still very hot.
An eggs Benedict in all but name, with chicken breast standing in for the ham. Two things need attention: the hollandaise is written in a shorthand that will scramble if taken literally, and the poaching water is far too hot.
- The muffins"Fresh muffins" here means English muffins — yeast-raised, griddle-baked, split with a fork rather than cut. Toast the cut faces well; a pale muffin collapses under the sauce.
- The hollandaise is the hingeButter "quite hot" poured onto two raw yolks will curdle them. Work the way the sauce is actually made: whisk the yolks with the lemon juice and a spoonful of water over barely simmering water until thick and ribboning, then dribble in 1/4 lb (115 g) of warm melted butter off the heat. Keep the sauce below about 160F/70C and it stays creamy.
- ProportionsA quarter pound of butter to two yolks is on the rich side; some modern recipes use three yolks to the same weight of butter. The recipe gives no seasoning at all: salt and a little cayenne are usual.
- Egg safety in the sauceThe yolks in a properly made hollandaise reach only a gentle cooking temperature and are not fully pasteurised. For anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs.
- Poaching temperatureBoiling water, even "gently," tears poached eggs apart. Bring the water to 180-190F/82-88C, where it steams and shivers but does not bubble. A tablespoon of vinegar per quart helps the whites set; a gallon of water is generous but sensible if you are doing eight.
- Poaching time"A few minutes" means three for a runny yolk and set white, four if you want the yolk thickened. Lift onto a folded towel for a moment so water does not thin the sauce.
- The chickenCold poached or roast breast, sliced to fit the muffin, should be warmed through before assembly — a minute in a little stock or under the broiler. Cold chicken between a hot muffin and a hot egg spoils the dish.
- YieldThe poaching instruction is written for eight eggs; on two halves a plate that is four servings, though the recipe does not say so. Build and sauce the plates at the last moment; hollandaise does not wait well and does not reheat.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) came out of the kitchens of the original Waldorf on Fifth Avenue, where he was maître d'hôtel, and the book is full of dishes named for cities, patrons and hotels in exactly this fashion. Philadelphia Eggs is a member of the muffin-egg-sauce family that also produced eggs Benedict, and the Waldorf's own claim to that dish — Oscar is generally said to have taken it down from a guest named Lemuel Benedict, who ordered the components as a hangover cure — is traditional rather than documented, and dates from an account given decades after the fact. Why chicken breast should make the dish Philadelphian is not explained; nineteenth-century hotel menus attached city names loosely, sometimes for a supplier, sometimes for a regular guest, sometimes for nothing more than variety on a long breakfast card. What the recipe does record faithfully is how hollandaise was made in a working hotel kitchen: butter, yolks, lemon, no water bath mentioned, and the whole thing whipped to order by a cook who had done it a thousand times.