Woman who invented eggies

After one especially raucous night of partying, Lemuel awoke in the morning and went to breakfast at the Waldorf Hotel, where he invented his own breakfast sandwich of two poached eggs, bacon, buttered toast, and a pitcher of hollandaise sauce.

For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. The vegan egg options available were not appealing to her: They had unnatural, confounding ingredient lists or could be used for baking but not for scrambled eggs, or they were largely relegated to specialty stores, O'Brien says.

O'Brien also felt there was a huge opportunity and market for vegan eggs. And you go to the egg aisle and there is just hardly any innovation. So in September, housebound in her Airbnb in Bend, O'Brien started researching on weekends and after work. She documented the properties of "regular" eggs, like mouthfeel and their multi-functionality, meaning you can eat them for breakfast but also to make cookies.

Then O'Brien drove to the local Walmart, bought a slew of ingredients, opened a spreadsheet for documenting results and started product testing. Though she had baked and experimented with recipes when she was young, "I learned everything about egg alternatives through reading, trial and error and speaking to people with more experience," she says.

Pretty quickly, O'Brien and her first taste-tester, Schools, ruled out soy. Schools, who works for ag tech greens farming company Plenty , has formal experience with taste testing. Many existing egg alternatives are soy-based, but O'Brien and Schools did not like the taste. They settled on a base of chickpeas — ergo the "chickpeas, not chicks" company slogan — and kala namak also known as black salt , turmeric, onion powder and nutritional yeast for flavor.

O'Brien was pleased with her progress, but knew something was still not right with the texture and mouthfeel. Sheneeded some help from someone with technical experience.

So she found Hugo Lisboa , a chemical engineer with a Ph. For a nominal fee, Lisboa offered to help make suggestions. He advised her on some gums and specialty ingredients, all of which O'Brien was able to locate and purchase online. I also provided a method for her to test and further develop her product. Too late for a proper breakfast, but too early for a real lunch, he had the chef whip up a massive hangover helper: two poached eggs, bacon and buttered toast topped with hollandaise sauce.

His career at the hotel helped bring the Waldorf salad, red velvet cake, and the Martini to popular acclaim. Proving to be apt at the restaurant business, he became the head waiter for the restaurant's private dining rooms.

Oscar of the Waldorf, who plays such a key role in that account, never confirmed the story, despite ample opportunity to do so," Gregory Beyer mentions in his p rofile of the eggs Benedict origin story for the New York Times. One last theory involves another New Yorker, a banker and yachtsman by the name of Commodore E. Montgomery , a distant relative of the Commodore. One of his good buddies happened to be President Grover Cleveland.

Between maintaining his financial empire and cruising through the Amazon River, did he really have time to invent a quintessential brunch dish? Hell, maybe he wanted to be known for a brunch dish enjoyed by millions throughout his hometown.

That makes eggs Benedict one of the New Yorkiest New York foods, something certainly worth toasting at your next bottomless brunch.