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Eggs Benedict
6 eggs 6 rounds thinly sliced ham Parsley 6 rounds buttered toast Mock Hollandaise sauce Prepare the toast and on it place the ham, pan-broiled. Keep this warm while poaching the eggs. Place an egg on top of each slice of ham, cover with the sauce and garnish.
A compressed, assembly-line version of the dish, written for a cook who already knows how to poach an egg and who has the book's sauce recipe to hand. The order of operations is the only real instruction here, and it is the right one.
- Mock HollandaiseThis is a cross-reference to another page in the book, not an ingredient you buy. Period "mock" hollandaise is usually a thin flour-and-butter white sauce finished off the heat with egg yolk and lemon juice or vinegar — cheaper and steadier than the emulsion, though it will still curdle if boiled after the yolk goes in. A true hollandaise works in its place.
- Rounds, not slicesThe ham and the toast are both called for in rounds. Cut them with a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass.
- Pan-broiled hamPan-broiling means dry, in a hot heavy skillet with no added fat, turning once — the ham is already cured and salty. Thin slices need under a minute a side; longer and they curl and toughen.
- Poaching the eggsBarely trembling water, about 180–190F, with a spoonful of vinegar. Three minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. Lift each egg out onto a towel for a moment or the water thins the sauce.
- Holding six at onceThe recipe glosses over the hardest part. Poach the eggs a few minutes ahead into cold water, then reheat them 30 seconds in hot water while the sauce is assembled; this is the only practical way to serve six plates together.
- Toast and butterThe buttered toast, not an English muffin, is the base in this version. Butter it while hot and build immediately — toast left standing goes leathery under sauce.
- The garnish"Garnish" means the parsley in the ingredient list, a small sprig or a pinch chopped over the sauce. Paprika serves the same purpose and is common in books of this era.
- YieldSix eggs, six rounds: six servings as written, or three plates of two if it is the centre of the meal.
Eggs Benedict belongs to the turn-of-the-century New York restaurant trade, and its origin is disputed rather than documented — the story generally traced to Delmonico's has a regular named Benedict asking for something new, while a competing claim attaches to the Waldorf. At some point the dish migrated from the restaurant into American household cookbooks, which is where this version sits: toast instead of a muffin, ham instead of Canadian bacon, and a "mock" sauce that trades the butter emulsion for a starch-thickened one a home cook could make on a gas range without curdling it. The substitution is the interesting part. Mock sauces of this kind reflect a period when domestic-science writers were rewriting hotel cooking for kitchens with fewer hands, less butter and no sauce chef standing by.