Talk:Eggs Benedict

Popes Benedict

Not to be confused with the Popes Benedict - most of whom need extending. (This message was submitted by an anonymous user.)

Including the current one? Isn't he long enough already? — Rickyrab | Talk 21:23, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Eggs Benedict XVI already exists.

Is it really necessary to deny a Benedictine monk connection in this article? After much research, I have never seen this theory anywhere except on the usual suspect web food pages. I'm going to remove this again unless someone has a persuasive argument it should remain. It's a little too ridiculous. Monks don't concoct fancy breakfast dishes. They make fruitcakes and liqueurs. And wine and cheese. --Mothperson 13:35, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

oh, come on, since when is it fancy a poached egg on top of a piece of bread? add some meat to the dish (or mix with potato and fish for lent) and you have nice meal (that people today have it as breakfast adding a bit of "fancy sauce" is not enough to call the idea of the connection ridiculous)

remember also "ouefs benedictine". And now see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Benedictine_monasteries_in_France . Still think it´s a ridiculous connection? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.201.179.209 (talk) 07:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

"Eggs Pope Benedict" sounds like an apocryphal tale to me. Apart from anything else, Pope Benedict didn't have a coronation! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.197.15.138 (talk) 22:12, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Egg McMuffin? Are you kidding?

After a whole paragraph of "if you substitute X for Y, for K for L, and etc, then if you squint hard enough it looks like eggs benedict", a plate of leftover parts from dissassembling a car can sound like a relative of eggs benedict. The McDonalds link is way far fetched.

Unknown what current practice is, but when I worked there we used Canadian bacon, or at least the circular ham marketed in the US as such. knoodelhed 5 July 2005 09:35 (UTC)

Yeah, plus Eggs Benedict has been changing ever since its inception. I see nothing farfetched in the link concept at all, and I'm usually pretty snippy about similar stuff. I did wipe out the Benedictine monks, after all. Food history is not straight-line. Strange branches shoot off. --Mothperson 5 July 2005 15:10 (UTC)

I removed it. Punctured Bicycle 16:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

same thing with the "American south" version. Putting ham and eggs inside some bread product seems natural, and not necessarily inspired by Eggs Benedict.

Petro Stopping Centers, a chain of truck stops in the U.S., have restaurants inside them called the Iron Skillet Restaurants. On their menu is something called a "Country Benedict" -- "two biscuit halves topped with sausage patties, country gravy and two eggs cooked to order". I'm somewhat hazy as to what biscuits and gravy with a side of sausage patties and eggs has to do with Eggs Benedict, but some folks do see the marketing potential. VulcanOfWalden 13:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what the origin of this discussion was, but the eggs benedict definitely was the inspiration for the egg mcmuffin. see here about 31 minutes in:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/95017/modern-marvels-breakfast-tech —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.151.167.185 (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Recipe is in Ranhofer

From the article: "Ranhofer's only mention of "Benedict" in his comprehensive 1894 cookbook, covering thirty years' worth of Delmonico's fare, relates to a large, marinated, roasted ham."

While this is correct, it's also a little misleading: a recipe identical to Eggs Benedict, albeit using ham rather than bacon, does appear in this work (The Epicurean) under the name of "Eggs à la Benedick." It is No. 2925, "Poached Eggs à la Boëldieu and Eggs à la Benedick" at the bottom of p.858, for anyone who wants to check it out.

If no one objects (or does it first), I'll try to re-word this section in a few days.GSwift 05:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead and changed it. Would have done it sooner but I was sick. --GSwift 20:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

… but not in the original edition

I've run into a curiosity here. The recipe may not have been in the original version of Ranhofer's book.

Checking for the presence of "Eggs à la Benedick" in Ranhofer's The Epicurean, I first ran across a copy of it on Michigan State University's Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project. The book there, broken into two parts, is stored as both page images as well as a transcript of the text. The page for recipe No. 2925 is indeed at the bottom of page 858 and is for "Poached Eggs à la Boëldieu", but contains no mention of "Eggs à la Benedick". Searching the HTML transcription of both halves of the book, I found no mention of "Benedick".

Google Books contains a copy of The Epicurean, also split into two parts. The source for the version on Google Books comes from a reprint in 2004 by Kessinger Publishing with some of the text available for limited preview. In this version, recipe No. 2925 is titled "Poached Eggs à la Boëldieu and Eggs à la Benedick" and the recipe for "Eggs à la Benedick" reads:

Cut some muffins in halves crosswise, toast them without allowing to brown, then place a round of cooked ham an eighth of an inch thick and of the same diameter as the muffins on each half. Heat in a moderate oven and put a poached egg on each toast. Cover the whole with Hollandaise sauce (No. 591).

As a guess, there were multiple editions of The Epicurean, but only later printings include a recipe for "Eggs à la Benedick". --VulcanOfWalden 02:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Image

I think, the picture does not show Eggs benedict. There is asparagus, tomatoe and potatoe on it! Does anybody have a real Eggs benedict-Image? 89.53.51.116 14:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have a picture of Eggs Benedict that I took myself after cooking it. It's available at:

http://neutrino.ath.cx/news/2007/03/eggs_benedict.jpg

I know I'm not the greatest chef or photographer, but that or a thumbnail version of it (http://neutrino.ath.cx/news/2007/03/eggs_benedict_thumb.jpg) can be freely uploaded by someone with an account, and I am more than happy to allow this image to be used for any purpose on wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.173.42.48 (talk) 08:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The photo that was being objected to was this one[1]. The current photo, from its description at Flickr, is of eggs Benedict as served at the Orange restaurant in Chicago, Illinois. It is a good photo of a standard eggs Benedict — English muffin, Canadian bacon, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce — with their house potatoes in the background. VulcanOfWalden 02:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, that makes more sense. I notice that whilst in the old picture the actual eggs benedict portion of the meal is less visible than the current one, I am unsure if I've ever seen the hollandaise sauce so white or so sparsely added! I assumed that was what the controversy was about. The old picture at least showed the sauce closer to the colour I am familiar with. Those spuds look pretty appetising though :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.173.42.48 (talk) 22:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

English muffins are American?

What is that supposed to mean? "English" muffins might be more popular in the USA than in England but that doesn't make them any less English. If no one objects me deleting that sentence in brackets...--Burningfeetman 07:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Quite. Soobrickay 01:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If English muffins lack deep English roots, they are in good company in Eggs Benedict. The hollandaise doesn't seem to be a Dutch sauce and the Canadian bacon doesn't seem to be strongly tied to Canada. VulcanOfWalden 12:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Eggs Benedict Image

The image does look like Eggs Benedict, it's just the accompaniments that are throwing you off! --chefski97

I believe you that it is indeed Eggs Benedict. But I don't think it's very representative of the dish in question. A wider-angle shot with identifiable muffin, eggs, hollandaise, and any additional sides would be nice. As it stands, it's a rather unappetizing, hard-to-discern picture. -- Chris 23:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Reference

McDonalds had a monopoly on the fast-food breakfast market until the mid-1980's. (reference MCDONALD'S: BEHIND THE ARCHES by John F. Love - Bantam Books, 1986, 1995)

Hm, not quite sure how the ref should look for this, can anyone fix? Thanks. MKV 04:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup/reference tags

Weird, I wrote a section on this. Don't know what happened to it. I've added some citation tags to individual facts, and I've added reference/accuracy tags to the article. Please do not remove the tags until the major facts of the article (origins, plus those with fact tags) have been substantiated with references. I did not add fact tags to all the facts that require references, because that would have made the article too messy. Anchoress 23:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Awesome work! This is probably the best-referenced breakfast article on WP. Anchoress 21:03, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

heart healthy

wow, so, if i want to be heart healthy i should just eat water animal meat instead of land animal meat? really? yeah, not so much. i'm pretty sure the eggs and sauce are far worse to the human heart than any sort of meat. nice try, though, whoever put that in. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.162.142.157 (talk) 14:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

Whilst the sauce contains a lot of butter (so yeah, I'm not going to argue with you on that one), eggs themselves have gotten a bad rap due only to their high cholesterol content. Initially, everyone thought all cholesterol == bad for you, but eggs are full of the "good" variety of cholesterol, and actually reduce your "bad" cholesterol (I would cite references here, but google is absolutely full of this information if you care to search for 'are eggs bad for you'.) It would be interesting to see if any studies have been done to see the effect of eating something full of bad and good cholesterol to see if they interact positively :) Anyway, obviously, everyone is different and anything to excess is stupid, but eggs are not as bad for you as a lot of other things people traditionally say are good for you... (and no, no references here either...) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.173.42.48 (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit by 83.203.4.140 on 09 Feb 2007 at 18:57, revision 106894582

A few points about the revision.

The changes in this revision to correct the "ungrammatical use of the verb substitute" are, if not wrong, nonstandard. The original sentences were correct. The object of the transitive verb substitute is what is being introduced, not what is being replaced. Fowler's Modern English Usage, second edition, gives examples of correct and incorrect usage:

CORRECT

1. We had to substitute margarine (for butter).
2. Aliens are being substituted (for Englishmen).
3. [Aliens are replacing Englishmen.]
4. The substitution of margarine (for butter) is having bad effects.
5. Let there be no more substitutions of aliens (for Englishmen).
6. Its substitution (for butter) is lamentable.

INCORRECT

1. We had to substitute butter (by margarine).
2. Englishmen are being substituted (by aliens).
3. Aliens are substituting Englishmen.
4. The substitution of butter (by margarine) is having bad effects.
5. Let there be no more substitutions of Englishmen (by aliens).
6. Its substitution (by margarine) is lamentable.

In the description for "Eggs Blackstone", editing "substitutes streaky bacon for back bacon" to "substitutes streaky bacon by back bacon" reverses what is being substituted for what. Based on a search for Eggs Blackstone recipes, I think this an error rather than a correction.

The edit "the dish is most often served in the ramiken [sic] it, and not just the egg, has been poached in" to the Eggs Florentine is too broad. One recipe cluster for Eggs Florentine puts poached eggs on a bed of cooked spinach, then tops it with Mornay sauce. Instead of a poached egg, some variants put a bed of cooked spinach into a ramekin or bowl, put a raw egg atop that, then cover with cheese or cheese sauce and bake. Yet another recipe cluster has Eggs Florentine as a vegetarian copy of Eggs Benedict -- a poached egg and cooked spinach atop an English muffin then covered by hollandaise. VulcanOfWalden 11:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Deletions

Benedict Arnold – Denying that the dish was named after Benedict Arnold is unnecessary. Though some do name their rendition of the dish eggs Benedict Arnold, it seems to be done in jest. I don't know of anyone who has seriously suggested that it was named after him. Josh Karpf's page does make this denial, but the comment was in line with the lighthearted tone of his page.

eggs Carolein – Doesn't appear to exist. -- VulcanOfWalden 00:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

eggs Michael – The dish was created by The Original Pancake House restaurant chain. It doesn't appear on their primary web site, so might not be served by the entire chain. The dish hasn't spread beyond the chain; however, mention of it has made its way into print media. Others have named dishes "eggs Michael", but the term doesn't to refer to the same dish. Listing every dish influenced by or related to eggs Benedict that appears somewhere as a recipe or on a restaurant menu would create a very long article. I'd prefer not to list those that are isolated to a single restaurant, unless, like McDonald's Egg McMuffin, the restaurant and dish are noteworthy. This is a marginal case, but I'm deleting it from the list of variations. If anyone wishes to reinstate the entry, perhaps after creating a wiki article for The Original Pancake House, some text with citations has been provided below (use Edit so you can grab the full text).

• Eggs Michael substitutes sausage patties and a mushroom sherry sauce for the ham and hollandaise. This dish is served by and originates with The Original Pancake House restaurant chain.

-- VulcanOfWalden 08:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Eggs Ben et Dictine – This is just blatant advertising by Cora restaurants. Entry states "Canadian version served at Cora with a generous amount of fruit on the side." After checking Cora's website I see that it is on the menu, and a photo of the item shows regular, basic eggs benedict with a bunch of fruit and whatnot on the side. This isn't particularly unique, and makes me think...advertising. I mean, they may have it on the menu, but there are a zillion other things on their menu. Xoxoui (talk) 18:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't clear at all

From the introduction: "usually topped with smoked bacon or ham (sometimes known as back bacon, which in the USA is called Canadian bacon)" doesn't make sense to me as a British reader - here, when you buy them in the shops, ham is already-cooked pork where bacon is raw pork (which you then take home and cook). So I don't understand how a raw pork product and a pre-cooked one are known as the same thing. Please can someone make it clear? 86.133.242.185 15:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The introduction was wrong regardless of viewpoint. It was on my list of things that needed fixing, but I've been distracted by a number of other shiny things in the interim. However, from a certain point of view and a bit of guesswork as to what the original author meant, it wasn't that far off.
        American "Canadian bacon" is smoked and cured pork loin — the same cut that British back bacon or Canadian peameal bacon[2] (who also call it back bacon) are taken from. It is precooked and normally cut into round or oval slices with little to no external fat. The round shape of Canadian-style bacon saves restaurants work and, as a guess, is the reason why it has become as popular as it has in eggs Benedict.
        Ham in the U.S. is often sold in a precooked form; however, there are exceptions, such the country ham of the American South or Italian Prosciutto hams. — VulcanOfWalden 17:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

WTF?

"South Dakota-based food historian Mary Gunderson created Eggs Benedict XVI to honor the German background of the recently elected pope. Sauerbraten or sausage and rye bread are the eggs' accompaniments."

So this paragraph in the trivia section (not sure why anyone puts trivia sections in Wikipedia, since wikipedia is one big steaming pile of trivia and anecdotes) directly contradicts other sourced arguments for the creation of this dish stated above.

What's the point? I, for one, don't believe any of the claims here for the creation of the dish -- not that it actually matters anyway. It's a very poor article and one (like most food "articles" on wikiality) is full of spam for restaurants and other food products, all nicely packed up as infotainment -- but spam nonetheless. There are a dozen recipe websites that give me more information than this "article". But since Wikiality games Google's search listings this piece of crap comes up on a higher listing than genuine high quality sources of information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.140.196 (talk) 23:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Mrs. Beeton & "Dutch sauce, for benedict"

An edit on 31 May 2009 added a paragraph about a "Dutch sauce, for benedict" recipe that appears in Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management with the edit comment giving the source for this as the hollandaise article. The problem here is that section of the hollandaise article was vandalized. It was originally written as "Dutch sauce, for fish" on 14 Aug 2004, then changed to "Dutch sauce, for benedict" on 23 Mar 2008. A check of the book's text confirms that this is vandalism. As such, I've gone ahead and removed that paragraph. — VulcanOfWalden (talk) 04:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Œufs Bénédictine & Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking

The paragraph giving œufs Bénédictine as the origin for eggs Benedict was first added on 09 Feb 2008 with a series of edits by Hwhitbread that read:

However, the most likely origin of the dish is suggested in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, where she describes a traditional French dish named œufs bénédictine, consisting of brandade (a puree of refreshed salt cod and potatoes), spread on triangles of fried bread. A poached egg is then set on top and napped with hollandaise. Still, it is not clear how this dish would have migrated to America, where it became popular. The combination of cod and eggs suggests it was a Lenten or meatless dish, and the use of salt cod suggests it could be as old as the Renaissance, when salt cod became more plentiful.

with later edits by others eventually bringing it to:

Another origin of the dish is suggested in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, where she describes a traditional French dish named œufs bénédictine, consisting of brandade (a puree of refreshed salt cod and potatoes), spread on triangles of fried bread. A poached egg is then set on top and napped with hollandaise. This story would also explain the distinctly French syntax, where the adjective follows, rather than precedes, the noun (although Oysters Rockefeller has the same syntax without needing a Romance-language origin). Still, it is not clear how this dish would have migrated to America, where it became popular. The combination of cod and eggs suggests it was a Lenten or meatless dish, and the use of salt cod suggests it could be as old as the Renaissance, when salt cod became more plentiful.

Mrs. Isabella Beeton's Household Management had recipes in the first edition (1861) for "Dutch sauce, for benedict" (p. 405) and its variant on the following page, "Green sauce, or Hollandaise verte", so it undoubtedly precedes the 20th century claimants above.

There are problems with this. The second paragraph has already been removed due to it being based on a vandalized section of the hollandaise article. An foundational problem is that Elizabeth David didn't suggest that oeufs benedictine is the origin of eggs Benedict. What she did say in a section on "La brandade de morue" (creamed salt cod) was that "[o]ne of the nicest subsidiary dishes to be made with this creamed salt cod is œufs Bénédictine, poached eggs placed on top of the brandade and covered with sauce hollandaise."

One might argue that though she doesn't suggest oeufs Benedictine as the origin, is it not still a reasonable hypothesis? Though she doesn't give a date for the introduction of oeufs Benedictine, she does say that a recipe for brandade is given in a book by the "famous chef Durand" published in 1830. Given the similarity in name between oeufs Benedictine and eggs Benedict and if a sufficiently early published mention for oeufs Benedictine could be found, isn't it a candidate for being a direct predecessor of eggs Benedict? Based on what I am aware of at this point, no.

The word "Benedictine" in this context implies that the dish is served on a bed of creamed codfish or with creamed codfish as an ingredient, such as in the recipe for Omelette Bénédictine from Escoffier's Le guide culinaire.

Brandade of salt cod.

The similarity in the names often causes people to interpret the less common dish—oeufs Benedictine—in light of the more common dish—eggs Benedict. Oeufs Benedictine gets pulled in the direction of eggs Benedict. The sentence immediately prior to Elizabeth David's description of oeufs Benedictine is a description of how the brandade is served: "The brandade is served warm, surrounded by triangles of fried bread or pastry. One of the nicest subsidiary dishes to be made with this creamed salt cod is œufs Bénédictine, poached eggs placed on top of the brandade and covered with sauce hollandaise." Le guide culinaire also has a recipe for oeufs Benedictine: "Poached or Soft-boiled: Cover the bottom of tartlet cases with a Brandade of salt cod (1805) mixed with a little chopped truffle. Place the eggs which have been coated with Sauce Crème, on top." Neither David's nor Escoffier's recipes have a bread base, which Hwhitbread's recapitulation of David's description adds: "consisting of brandade (a puree of refreshed salt cod and potatoes), spread on triangles of fried bread. A poached egg is then set on top and napped with hollandaise."

If oeufs Benedictine were the origin for eggs Benedict, one would expect the recipes to diverge from a common source as time passes. What has instead happened is that the recipes come closer together as time progresses. The oldest published recipes we have for eggs Benedict are in essence the same as the standard recipe of today—a poached egg on a round piece of ham atop an English muffin, all of which covered with hollandaise sauce. The oldest published recipe that I know of for oeufs Benedictine, Escoffier's recipe from 1921, shares in common with eggs Benedict the poached egg. David's recipe from 1970 (both her and Escoffier's recipes may well appear in older editions of their books) pushes the recipe closer to eggs Benedict by replacing the Sauce Crème, a bechamel derivative, with hollandaise. Jacques Pepin, in his autobiography, tells of preparing eggs bénédictine as part of the official navy cook's exam:

He ordered me to prepare eggs bénédictine. I had prepared this dish in most of the restaurants where I had worked. The versions served at Le Meurice, Le Plaza, and La Maxéville were basically the same: a poached egg placed on a toasted slice of brioche lined with ham, napped with hollandaise sauce, and, as a final touch on top, a slice of black truffle. I had made eggs bénédictine dozens if not hundreds of times, without a word of complaint from the most discriminating palates in the world.

The petty officer took one look at my preparation and snorted. "You call yourself a cook?" he said. "Everyone knows eggs bénédictine calls for poached eggs to be served with a puree of salted codfish and a cream sauce."

Salted codfish? Cream sauce? I had never heard of that version and never met a cook who prepared eggs bénédictine that way. The petty officer had found this archaic variation of the dish, viewed as a quaint curiosity by all professionals, in my precious Escoffier's Le Guide culinaire. It was a trap, but the damage was done. I flunked. Algeria beckoned.

— Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen

For these reasons, I am removing the paragraph on oeufs Benedictine from the Origin section. — VulcanOfWalden (talk) 10:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

List of References Removed

I don't think anyone really cares about references to eggs benedict, and it's inclusion seels a little random. It looks kind of like someone was doing some research and included their findings on this page. Maybe the info can me moved somewhere else in case it is useful in the future?--Prudhombre (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Eggs Steve and Norwegian

Eggs Steve is a delicious addition to the fold and should be reinstated... don't take it away until you try it - then you'll see.

Where is Eggs Norwegian? If it's good enough for the menu at Balthazars in New York City (best breakfast in the world), it should be good enough for Wikipedia... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.130.65.155 (talk) 14:53, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Portobello Benedict

I've added this to the list of variations, sadly i'm unsure of how to add references. but if someone is willing to help me out by adding them they are more than easy to find (just use google for many options [ie, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/healthy-appetite-with-ellie-krieger-/grilled-portobello-benedict-recipe/index.html ]) thanks wiki friends.