Eggs Benedict
The hollandaise is made over water that is barely trembling and off the heat as soon as it thickens. Everything else is timing.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total
- 35 min
- Serves
- 2
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Eggs
- Milk
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Hollandaise
Poached eggs
To build
Method
Hollandaise
Melt the butter and leave it somewhere warm. It must be warm, not hot: butter above about 60C will cook the yolks on contact and the sauce will scramble.
Whisk the yolks, lemon juice and cold water in a heatproof bowl until pale and slightly frothy.
Set the bowl over a pan of water that is steaming but not simmering, with the base of the bowl clear of the water.
Whisk constantly for 3 to 4 minutes, until the mixture thickens enough to leave a trail and doubles in volume.
Take the bowl off the heat and add the warm butter in a very thin stream, whisking hard the whole time. Pouring it in fast is the single most common way hollandaise splits.
Whisk in the salt and cayenne, and keep the sauce somewhere warm — not hot — with a lid on. It will hold for about half an hour.
Poached eggs
Bring a wide pan of water to a bare simmer and add the vinegar.
Crack each egg into a fine sieve first and let the loose watery white drain away. That thin white is what makes the wisps and streamers; without it the egg poaches as a neat round.
Slide the eggs into the water and cook for 3 minutes for a set white and a runny yolk.
Lift them onto kitchen paper. Wet eggs make a soggy muffin.
To build
Toast the split muffins, butter them and lay on the ham.
Sit an egg on each half, spoon over the hollandaise and scatter with chives. Serve immediately.
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What to expect
- Taste
Rich and lemony, with the sauce doing almost all the flavour. The salt and the cayenne are what stop it being merely fatty, and both are usually underdone.
- Aroma
Butter and lemon.
- Texture
Soft on soft on soft, which is why the muffin must be properly toasted — it is the only firm thing on the plate.
- Sound
None.
- How the flavour moves
Butter and lemon first, then the salt of the ham, then the yolk when it breaks and changes the whole dish.
- Serve it
Everything warm rather than hot, which is a consequence of the sauce and is correct.
- Goes with
Nothing. Coffee, or a glass of something with bubbles.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Moderate. The hollandaise is the only genuinely technical sauce in this collection after the Alfredo.
- Cost
Low, and it looks like considerably more.
- Equipment
A heatproof bowl, a pan, a balloon whisk, a fine sieve and a slotted spoon.
- When to make it
A weekend morning, for two people, with nothing else happening.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
The hollandaise doubles in volume and leaves a trail when the whisk is lifted. A poached egg is done when the white is opaque and the egg feels like a soft water balloon when nudged.
- And it feels like
The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon and pourable, not stiff.
- Food safety
Hollandaise contains barely cooked egg yolk and is held warm, which is the classic setting for a food safety problem — it should be made close to serving, held no more than about an hour, and not reheated or kept. Anyone pregnant, very young, elderly or immunocompromised should use eggs stamped with the British Lion mark, which are from vaccinated flocks and are considered safe to eat raw or lightly cooked.
- Where it goes wrong
- Butter too hot, which scrambles the yolks.
- Water simmering rather than steaming under the bowl.
- Adding the butter too fast, which is the most common cause of a split sauce.
- Not sieving the eggs, which gives wisps and streamers.
- Boiling the poaching water, which tears the eggs apart.
- Wet eggs on the muffin, which goes soggy immediately.
- Old eggs, whose whites are too thin to hold.
- If it does go wrong
Split hollandaise: take it off the heat, put a tablespoon of cold water in a clean bowl and whisk the split sauce into it a spoonful at a time — it usually comes back. Scrambled: it will not come back. Too thick: a spoonful of warm water. Eggs in wisps: sieve them, and buy fresher ones.
- Making it ahead
Nothing. The sauce holds half an hour at most and that is the limit of it.
- Keeping it
None. Hollandaise does not keep and does not reheat.
- Reheating
No.
- Freezing
No.
- Leftovers
None.
- Scaling it
Poach four eggs at a time in a wide pan, no more. The hollandaise scales to six yolks comfortably.
- Substitutions
English muffins are the traditional base and a thick slice of good bread works. Malt vinegar in the poaching water is fine; the vinegar's job is to help the white set faster and any will do.
- Dietary swaps
Contains eggs, milk and gluten. There is no meaningful dairy-free hollandaise — it is an emulsion of butter. Nut free. Vegetarian with spinach instead of ham.
- Shopping for it
British Lion eggs, which matters here because the yolks are barely cooked.
- Keeping the cost down
Cheap for what it looks like — eggs, butter and a muffin.
- Sustainability
Eggs have a modest footprint compared with meat, and this dish is mostly eggs and butter. Dairy is the heavier half. The ham is the only meat and four slices go a long way; the spinach version is genuinely as good and is the lowest-impact way to eat this dish. Buying eggs from higher-welfare systems is the more meaningful choice here than any quantity change, given how few are used.
- Nutrition
Very rich. It is butter, egg yolk and ham on bread.
- Worth it?
Warm butter, a thin stream and a sieve. Three details and a dish with a reputation for being difficult stops being difficult.
Where it comes from
- Origin
New York, around 1900.
- Also called
Eggs Benedict.
- Said out loud
Straightforward.
- What the name means
After a man named Benedict, though which one is the whole argument.
- History
Two accounts compete. In one, a stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict ordered a hangover cure at the Waldorf in 1894 and the chef adapted it. In the other, Mr and Mrs LeGrand Benedict asked for something new at Delmonico's and the dish was created for them. Both were recorded long after the events they describe, both come from interested parties, and neither can be checked. What is not disputed is that the dish is New York and turn-of-the-century.
- Why it matters
The defining brunch dish, and the item most restaurants are judged on at that meal.
- When it is eaten
Weekend brunch, and cooking for someone you want to impress.
- The traditional way
Hollandaise, which is one of the French mother sauces and is an emulsion of egg yolk and butter, and poaching.
- How it changed
The variations multiplied — royale with salmon, florentine with spinach — and the base has not moved.
- Regional variations
Countless, and all of them are the same dish with the ham swapped.
- How this version differs
The sieve for the eggs, and the insistence that the butter be warm rather than hot. Both are the difference between the dish working and not.
- Sources and credit
Disputed between Lemuel Benedict and the LeGrand Benedicts.
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