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Poached Eggs, Benedictine
Neatly dress six thin slices freshly boiled ham on six round-shaped hot toasts placed on a hot dish. Lay on top of the ham one poached egg on each. Then spread a tablespoon Hollandaise over each egg. Sprinkle a very little chopped parsley over all and serve very hot.
An assembly recipe: everything depends on the components being ready at once and genuinely hot. The Hollandaise is assumed rather than given, which tells you the book expects a cook with a sauce already standing in a bain-marie.
- The hinge: heat and timingToast, ham, eggs and sauce all have to arrive together, and the dish is cold within a minute of plating. Poach the eggs last, into water already at a bare shiver, and have warmed plates ready before anything goes into the pan.
- Hollandaise, unstatedThe recipe assumes you have it. Roughly three egg yolks and a tablespoon of water whisked over gentle heat until thickened, then 6 oz melted butter beaten in drop by drop, finished with lemon and salt. Hold it warm but well short of simmering; too much heat will curdle it, and once chilled it is awkward to bring back.
- "Freshly boiled ham"Not deli ham. This means a piece of wet-cured gammon simmered at home and sliced warm off the joint. A thick slice of good cooked ham warmed briefly in a dry pan is the practical stand-in; avoid heavily smoked country ham, which will overwhelm the sauce.
- Round toastsCut with a cutter from a firm white loaf so the round matches the egg. The toast here should be thin, crisp and buttered so it does not go sodden.
- PoachingWater at 180-190F with a splash of vinegar, no salt, and eggs as fresh as you can get so the white holds. Three to four minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk; lift onto a cloth to drain before saucing, or the water will thin the Hollandaise.
- A tablespoon of sauceThat is the period measure and it is a modest one, meant to coat the egg rather than flood the plate. Spoon it over while the egg is still steaming so it settles smooth.
- YieldSix servings as written, one egg each, which suits a breakfast or lunch course. Halving is straightforward; the Hollandaise is not worth making in quantities below three yolks.
Eggs Benedict has two competing origin stories, both traditional rather than documented. One credits Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street broker said to have ordered bacon, poached eggs and hollandaise on toast at the Waldorf around the 1890s as a hangover cure; the other credits Delmonico's in New York, where a Mrs. LeGrand Benedict is said to have asked for something new at lunch, and where Charles Ranhofer printed a version as "Eggs a la Benedick." The Delmonico's line matters here, because Alexander Filippini spent decades as a chef and manager at that restaurant before compiling his cookbooks, and a great deal of what he sets down under grand-sounding French names is simply the New York restaurant cooking of the 1880s and 1890s written out for domestic use. The version he gives — toast rather than muffin, boiled ham rather than bacon — is one of several forms the dish took as it circulated.