Little Big Lunch: Eggs Benedict - Recap

Alton thumbs through a book entitled Forgotten Food Folklore. The history of food is fat with familiar names like Clarence Birdseye, Milton Hershey and Dr. Salisbury. But for every such giant there are perhaps thousands of unsung heroes. One is Guy Barringer, who wrote for the English magazine Hunter's Weekly late in the nineteenth century. Alton asks “Mr. Barringer” to describe the beginning of an average hunting day.

“Barringer” explains that when hunting birds, hunters traditionally depart much too early in the day for a proper breakfast. So they pack along traveling snacks: bread and cheese and maybe even a little cognac to “ward the chill and steady the nerves only”, of course. By eleven or so, their ammunition exhausted, the party returns for a proper meal of tea, crumpets, kippers and suchlike. Seizing on this idea, Barringer wrote in Hunter's Weekly that a meal served around noon on Sunday, beginning with tea or coffee, would eliminate the need to get up early on Sunday, and make life brighter for Saturday carousing. This essay, “Brunch, A Plea” introduced the concept and the term, a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch. According to the essay, brunch makes you feel good about yourself and your fellow man, and sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week. Barringer intended that brunch be prepared at home, and Alton proposes to take it back from restaurants and their platters of sticky, steamed Belgian waffles and dried-up, grainy eggs Benedict. With quality ingredients, a dash of technique and of course a little science, Alton proposes to turn tired eggs Benedict from a mere meal named for an infamous traitor into... Good Eats!

Okay, Alton concedes, eggs Benedict weren't really named for an infamous traitor. As “Benedict Arnold” sits nearby, Alton explains that the dish's origins are a little hazy. (From somewhere, a hunk of lettuce and a cry of “traitor” hurtle towards Alton's guest, prompting a plaintive response that “that was a long time ago”). Columnist Craig Claiborne credits Commondore E. C. Benedict, who died in 1920 at eighty-six. But did he really invent the dish? Perhaps not. Food scholar Evan Jones suggests the answer may lie years earlier, during the gay nineties, with a stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict. Benedict visited the Waldorf and ordered toast stacked with bacon, poached eggs, and “a gooseneck of Hollendaise.” The Waldorf's chef, Oscar Tschirky changed the toast to an English muffin and the bacon to ham, and added this item to his menu. There is also the account of Mrs. Le Grande Benedict. Unable to find a dish she wanted on the menu at New York's Delmonico's, she summoned its chef Charles Ranhofer, who consulted her regarding her precise wishes and then devised the dish. Or did he? Well, his 1894 book The Epicurean contains a recipe for “eggs à la benedick.”

Alton starts with English muffins, the base of the dish. In 1880, a baker named Samuel Thomas developed the English muffin from the similarly griddle-baked crumpet, in Chelsea, New York. Yes, English muffins are actually American muffins (although Samuel Thomas himself was English). They caught on because they were easier to portion and toast than regular bread (the mechanical bread slicer did not yet exist). Although a typical mega-mart has shelves of them in many varieties, Alton believes the homemade sort is superior.

To make English muffins, Alton adds flour, dry yeast, sugar, kosher salt, and powdered milk to a mixing bowl. Dry milk adds proteins and milk sugars, which promote browning without requiring excess liquid. Alton combines this dry team for a few seconds using his stand mixer while he turns his attention to the wet team. The wet teams is water and shortening heated in his microwave to 120° F – 130° F, about a minute or two. Because his dough will rise overnight in the refrigerator, Alton does not proof his yeast; proofing mostly helps with recipes requiring rapid rising.

Alton adds the heated wet team to the dry team and brings his mixer slowly to medium speed, holding it there for three minutes, stopping halfway through or so to scrape the bowl. That produces a gluten mesh to capture the gas bubbles emitted by the yeast as they digest sugar. The result is more like a batter than a dough, very wet and sticky. That extra moisture will provide further lift when the oven's heat turns it to steam, promoting the classic “nooks and crannies” of the English muffin. Alton lets his dough rise in a bowl which he covers with plastic wrap to prevent formation of a skin. The following morning, Alton removes the risen, stiff mixture and beats it for another three minutes to incorporate some air. This loosens it back to an almost batter consistency.

While that mixes, Alton hits eight forms with nonstick spray. These forms could be muffin rings purchased for around twenty dollars, or they could be ordinary cans with the ends removed, which are free. Either will work. Cans, which Alton uses, have an advantage of height: one may choose to make taller muffins in them.

Although corn meal is traditional, Alton prefers rolled oats; he adds a few to the bottom of each ring. Then he adds divides the dough equally between the rings and finishes with a few more rolled oats. He covers that with a piece of parchment and lets it rest for an hour to rise a bit longer.

A “hour” later Alton slides his muffins into a 400° F oven, covered with another sheet pan, for about thirty minutes (shorter muffins would take less time). Yes, Alton knows English muffins are usually griddle-fried, but the time demands of brunch make this problematic. With five minutes left to go, Alton removes the top pan and the parchment, which allows the tops to brown. After removing them from the oven he allows them to cool for a few minutes before removing them from the molds. A small, offset spatula works well for muffins reluctant to part with their tins.

For a small group, Alton would mix the Hollandaise sauce and poach the eggs in the usual way. But a large group could require as many as twenty poached eggs. Cooking that many without resorting to frying or other behavior unbecoming a cook would be a real challenge, so Alton offers an alternative poaching method. He fetches down a very large pot and adds four six ounce custard cups to it, then sufficient water to cover them to a quarter inch or so. To that he adds some vinegar and kosher salt and cranks up the heat. He also puts a folding steamer basket into a large bowl and covers that with ice and water.

For four servings he needs eight very fresh eggs: as eggs age, the membranes inside break down, which makes poaching them properly difficult. When the water on the stove reaches a boil, Alton dials the heat back to maintain a temperature just under a boil – about 205° F (Alton uses an infrared thermometer to verify this, but an instant read probe thermometer will also work).

Alton adds eggs to each custard cup in the pot at ten second intervals. This precise timing helps him ensure that all the eggs cook evenly. He keeps track of which order he adds eggs to the custard cups so that he knows which order to remove them; at five minutes he begins removing the eggs, again at ten second intervals. Done correctly, every egg cooks for precisely the same length of time. As he removes each egg, he drops it in the ice bowl. When all the eggs finish cooking, he slides the bowl into the chill chest; the eggs will keep there for as long as six hours while he builds his Hollandaise sauce and perhaps waits for guests to arrive.

For the Hollandaise sauce, Alton collects several egg yolks and half a pound of butter – it's tasty but it's not low fat. Egg yolks provide color and an important chemical – a phospholipid called lecithin. The head of lecithin is hydrophilic, meaning it can dissolve in water. The tail is hydrophobic – it repels water but can dissolve in fat. This property supports emulsification of fats and water. In this case mixing breaks butter fat into small globules studded with lecithin, with the water hydrophilic heads protruding, so they will suspend in water. This produces a smooth mixture.

Using a board game, Alton reveals, considers and discards several methods for building the sauce. These include a blender method, a method using clarified butter and a double boiler method, and even an instant mix method! He settles on a traditional (but somewhat feared) stove top method. It delivers maximum flavor in minimum time.

Alton adds egg yolks to a sauce pan along with a bit of water, ground cayenne pepper and kosher salt. He whisks that for a minute before turning one burner to a low heat, and then sliding the pan on and off that heat for short intervals. His goal is to reach about 140° F without scrambling his eggs. That requires slowly heating the mixture, accomplished by moving it on and off of the heat. Heated, the egg mixture looks more like a custard. At that point Alton starts adding butter, a pat at a time, keeping the mixture at a slightly cooler 120° F. When half the butter has gone into the emerging sauce, Alton adds a little lemon juice, then adds the rest of the butter the same way. The water in the butter will keep the sauce loose for now, so he doesn't worry about that. As the heat drives off moisture the sauce will thicken. When the last of the butter has melted into the sauce, Alton flavors it with a bit more each of cayenne and lemon juice, tasting it and adding additional juice and salt as needed to get the taste he prefers. To hold his finished sauce, Alton preheats a thermos by filling it with very hot water, then dumps out the water and adds the sauce. It will stay good for an hour or two before the quality declines.

Alton retrieves his poached eggs and eight slices of Canadian bacon from the fridge. He fork splits his English muffins (this enhances their texture) and slides them into the oven to brown just a bit. While that's happening he julienne cuts the ham and puts it into a sauce pan to heat. He removes his poached eggs (that steamer basket comes in handy here) and adds them to a pot of hot water to reheat for about a minute. After a minute he lifts the basket out of the water and uses a pair of metal skewers to suspend the basket over the steam, which keeps the eggs hot until the last minute.

Alton uses a dot of sauce to hold the muffins in place, then adds bacon and an egg to each muffin, finishing with Hollandaise sauce. A properly made sauce should mostly remain atop the egg, but slowly run down the sides.

At the table, all of Alton's historical guests have reappeared to share his eggs Benedict. Alton offers Guy Barrington a word of thanks for the concept of brunch, and a promise not to let poor quality restaurants ruin the meal again!

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