Lemuel’s Benediction: The story behind a brunch icon

The New Yorker magazine of 19 December 1942 takes up the tale:

“Forty-eight years ago, Lemuel Benedict came into the dining room of the old Waldorf for a late breakfast. He had a hangover & ordered buttered toast, crisp bacon, 2 poached eggs, & a hooker of hollandaise sauce, & then & there put together the dish that has, ever since, borne his name, Eggs Benedict.”

Not surprisingly, the hotel endorses this genesis. Now known as the Waldorf Astoria, it claims Mr Benedict’s remedial meal so impressed the culinary eye of the maître d’hôtel that he thought he could improve it – and then put it on the menu. He tossed the toast in favour of an English muffin, swapped the streaky bacon for either ham or Canadian bacon (back bacon), and served it ready-sauced.

This variant would perhaps be better monikered as “Eggs Oscar” after the maitre d’, Oscar Tschirky. (On the Morning After something that’s more trickily called “Eggs Tschirky” might not have risen so high in the international brunch firmament.)

Oscar’s version is really very different to Mr Benedict’s. His bacon was almost certainly streaky because he wanted it to be “crisp” – an age-old favourite way to serve streaky. Back bacon tastes nowhere nearly as good when it’s crisped to the same extent.

Also, he stipulated toast, as opposed to something with the higher sweetness of an English muffin. Finally, he ordered his Hollandaise in a “hooker”. In other words, in a jug and not poured child-service style all over his restorative before it reached him.

The Waldorf Astoria – and NYC itself – has certainly continued the “improving” drive of the innovating Oscar. As the hotel’s blog said in 2017, “This mainstay of brunch menus throughout the City can be dressed with anything from smoked salmon (instead of Canadian bacon), a corn cake or crab cake (instead of the English muffin) and hollandaise sauces infused with truffle oil or topped with caviar.”

Photo by John Baker on Unsplash

Why not sprinkle it with gold leaf and decorate the plate with a diamond necklace? New Yorkers, hey? So pedestrian.

Mr Benedict would not have approved of all the modernising modifications. According to a 2007 New York Times article, Was he the Eggman?, by Gregory Beyer, “After that history-making morning, Lemuel Benedict revelled in the attention and prestige that resulted from his breakfast order. But his original request had specified toast, and he never warmed to the idea of English muffins”. And neither do I.

Whatever its true origins may be, there’s one persistent dish-myth that needs correcting: it’s totally wrong to suggest that an excellent, authentically-restoring Benedict is hard to make. It isn’t – even on the Morning After.

Eggs Benedict: The Original Recipe

As prescribed for himself by Mr Lemuel Benedict at The Waldorf Hotel on a Morning After in 1894.

Each bruncher will need two poached eggs, two thick-ish slices of buttered sourdough toast and four handsome rashers of streaky bacon. Plus a hooker of Hollandaise – for sharing.

I don’t know – and perhaps nobody does – how Mr Benedict asked for his order to be plated, but I’ll presume that he intelligently asked for a fine stack of crispy streaky to be served on buttered toast with lightly poached eggs perched on top. And Hollandaise offered on the side.

The Hollandaise Sauce – for four keen brunchers

On the Morning After, the simpler the better and this Hollandaise is as about as simple as it gets. Stir, microwave and stir again. Done!

4 egg yolks

½ a level teaspoon of salt

½ a level teaspoon of cayenne pepper

Juice from half a good-sized lemon

6 ozs salted butter

To keep the finished sauce warm and ready for serving, half-fill a cereal bowl with boiling water and set it to one side. Now you’re ready to make your Hollandaise.

Melt the butter in a small pan. As soon as it’s barely melted, remove from the heat and allow it to it cool for about three minutes.

Put all the Hollandaise ingredients except the butter into a half-pint (-ish) microwave-proof jug with a wide mouth – a “hooker”. Use a fork to thoroughly stir together the yolks, lemon juice, salt and cayenne pepper.

Slowly pour the coolish butter into the yolk-mix – stirring all the while.

Now heat the ready-hookered Hollandaise in the microwave for no more than 20 seconds and immediately give the whole mixture a good whisking with your fork. Give it another 10 seconds in the microwave and whisk again. That’s it!

To retain the heat of the sauce, put the jug in the cereal bowl of by now slightly cooled boiled water.

To plate your Benedicts, pile the bacon onto each person’s buttered toast and top with an egg. As soon as that’s done, give the Hollandaise a final stirring and serve at once – on the side.

Did Brunch begin with Mr Benedict?

Does the hungover stockbroker deserve recognition even beyond the dish he self-prescribed in 1894? Maybe he does.

It’s known that he was a dab-hand in his own kitchen and that a mate of his, the legendary opera singer, Enrico Caruso, apparently used to burst into song at the quality of Lemuel’s home-cooking.

So, it seems he had enough culinary smarts to create his own meal – and one that’s become synonymous with brunch. Just like the Bloody Mary.

His Waldorf visit came at a significant moment in the Brunch timeline. Here’s why. A British journalist, Guy Beringer, wrote an article titled, Brunch: A Plea, for the London magazine, Hunter’s Weekly. His plea was for an entirely new meal which he christened Sunday Brunch. You can read the full story here on TGIFood.

But his seminal article didn’t appear until December the following year – 1895. Aha!

Beringer didn’t coin the B word, but he was the first to define its purpose: it was specifically intended to revive those who’d had one too many the Night Before. He also laid down its principles: it was to be eaten late morning; and beers and whiskeys could be substituted for tea and coffee.

Benedict’s Waldorf order certainly follows two out of three of the good Guy’s guidelines: it was a late-breakfast and its purpose was hangover-curing. So far, so good.

As for the all-important third guideline, what did Lemuel drink with his medicating meal? Tea? Coffee? Water?

Who knows? But, and it’s a big one, if he ordered something restoratively alcoholic, then he’d surely be a real contender for the title, Mr Brunch. (Sorry, Guy.)

Did Tschirky really evolve Benedict’s dish?

Oscar seriously knew about food and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of its preparation and presentation. His vastly comprehensive, 900-plus page tome, ‘The Cookbook by “Oscar” of The Waldorf’, was published in 1896 with multiple-hundreds of incredibly varied recipes.

He also came from the top-drawer of New York cuisine. Prior to joining The Waldorf, he’d been the maitre’d at the city’s most celebrated restaurant, Delmonico’s. This place had set the bar for American fine-dining and was started by a brotherly-duo from Oscar’s own mother-country, Switzerland.

As for the dish in question, there’s a competing tale that an Oscar-style Eggs Benedict was first created at Delmonico’s. But the story doesn’t include hangovers, bacon or toast. So, this silly me-too claim gets automatically disqualified.

Perhaps most telling of all in this origins squabble is that in his colossal cookbook, Oscar’s only mention of a Benedict-type egg-dish is a recipe for cold chicken on a toasted muffin topped by poached eggs dressed with Hollandaise sauce.

Its name? “Philadelphia Eggs”. DM