Are you sure it wasn't the 1770's. Seems to me we should put Benedict Arnold a little further back on the time line. Eggs Benedict anyone? Was it under Jefferson's watch or Washington's. Hmmmmm does it really matter we've got new fish to fry.
Actually, Eggs Benedict have nothing to do with it. According to A Cozy Book of Breakfasts and Brunches (Prima Publishing, 1996), "many years ago" a Wall Street financier named LeGrand Benedict, a regular patron of Manhattan's ritzy Delmonico's restaurant, complained that there was nothing new on the menu. The chef's response was this dish. A variant myth credits, instead of the chef, the Delmonico's maitre d' and Mrs. Benedict. The name of the chef, and indeed any real facts about the genesis of eggs Benedict, are lost to history. The new Joy of Cooking (Scribner, 1997) dates the dish in the 1920s, and says the original base may have been toast.
A revisionist history: According to e-mail to this site from Cutts Benedict, eggs Benedict was born when his father's cousin, Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street broker, invented and ordered the dish in 1894 at the Waldorf Hotel, where chef Oscar Tschirky added it to the menu. |
