Best Benedicts

One morning at the turn of the last century, Lemuel Benedict shuffled into New York’s Waldorf Hotel looking for a dish to cure his hangover. He asked for poached eggs, bacon, and hollandaise on white toast. The bacon morphed into Canadian bacon and the toast into an English muffin and the dish that bears Benedict’s name was born. While there’s nothing wrong with the classic formula, its simplicity encourages such creative variations as crab cake Benedict, smoked salmon Benedict, veggie Benedict, and bagel Benedict. In all of them, it’s the refined glow of buttery, lemon-tweaked hollandaise sauce that makes the difference.