It may be an American holiday but we love any excuse to indulge...
A quick history of Eggs Benedict:
There are two versions of how the dish originated…
Story 1: In the 1860’s, a regular customer of a restaurant, Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, found nothing to her liking on the menu and wanted something different to eat so she discussed this with Chef Charles Ranhofer, and the resulting dish was Eggs Benedict.
Story 2: In 1894, Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street broker, who was suffering from a hangover, ordered “buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs, and a hooker of hollandaise sauce” at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. The Waldorf’s chef, Oscar Tschirky, was so impressed with the creation that he put the dish on his breakfast and lunch menus but substituted ham for the crisp bacon and a toasted English muffin for toasted bread.
Variations on the traditional Eggs Benedict...
Eggs Blackstone - Substitutes streaky bacon for ham and a slice of tomato.
Eggs Florentine - Substitutes spinach for the ham.
Eggs Montreal - Substitutes salmon for the ham.
Huevos Benedictos - substitutes either sliced avocado or chorizo for the ham and is topped with both salsa and hollandaise sauce.
Spam Benedict - substitutes spam for the ham
Irish Benedict - replaces the ham with corned beef.
Eggs Frederick - substitutes the hollandaise sauce with ketchup.