Eggs Benedict

Eggs Benedict is a common American breakfast or brunch dish, consisting of two halves of an English muffin, each topped with Canadian bacon or sliced ham, a poached egg, and hollandaise sauce. The dish is believed to have originated in New York City.
There are conflicting accounts as to the origin of eggs Benedict.
Delmonico's in Lower Manhattan says on its menu that "Eggs Benedict was first created in our ovens in 1860." One of its former chefs, Charles Ranhofer, also published the recipe for Eggs à la Benedick in 1894.
In an interview recorded in the "Talk of the Town" column of The New Yorker in 1942, the year before his death, Lemuel Benedict, a retired Wall Street stock broker, said that he had wandered into the Waldorf Hotel in 1894 and, hoping to find a cure for his morning hangover, ordered "buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of hollandaise". Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel, was so impressed with the dish that he put it on the breakfast and luncheon menus but substituted ham for the bacon and a toasted English muffin for the toast.
A later claim to the creation of eggs Benedict was circuitously made by Edward P. Montgomery on behalf of Commodore E. C. Benedict. In 1967 Montgomery wrote a letter to then The New York Times food columnist Craig Claiborne, which included a recipe he said he had received through his uncle, a friend of the commodore. Commodore Benedict's recipe—by way of Montgomery—varies greatly from Ranhofer's version, particularly in the hollandaise sauce preparation—calling for the addition of a "hot, hard-cooked egg and ham mixture".
The modern version differs a bit from these early versions and has split English muffin, topped Canadian bacon, lightly poached egg, and smothered in hollandaise sauce, which is made from eggs, lemon, and melted butter.
It is popular to make variations on eggs Benedict, and some of the most popular are eggs florentine (spinach replaces bacon), eggs royale (smoked salmon replaces bacon), eggs Sardou (spinach and artichoke replaces bacon and muffin), eggs neptune (crab replaces bacon), eggs cochon (pulled pork replaces bacon and buttermilk biscuit replaces the muffin). In many cases it has become popular to simply replace the word eggs with the meat that replaces the bacon, for example, rather than eggs neptune, crab benedict, even though the recipe still has two poached eggs. Examples of this are steak benedict or salmon benedict, and replacements include corned beef, fried chicken, or shrimp.
Many variations of eggs Benedict exist, the most common involve replacing the bacon or English muffin, or both:
Some variations involve replacing the Canadian bacon, such as lobster benedict, corned beef, or steak benedict. In other cases the bread might be changed from an English muffin, to toast, sliced potato, or a biscuit. One popular variation is to replace the Canadian bacon with smoke salmon, and it has gather a large number of names from Eggs Royale, Atlantic, Montreal, and others, and some regions have a local name for this variation.
Meatless Eggs Benedict may omit the Canadian bacon altogether, or replace it with something else such as avocado, tomato, mushroom, or tofu. There is a version of California Eggs Benedict that replaces the Canadian bacon with sliced tomato and avocado.
Eggs benedict has also been made into breakfast sandwich by adding an additional English muffin half on top.
A version which replaces the sauce, is Eggs Halifax, which substitutes New England clam chowder for hollandaise.