Eggs Benedict 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
Ham and eggs legs; the phrase was also used with this meaning in the U.S. in the 1920s. "Like ham and eggs" refers to things that typically go together and are difficult to separate. To "ham and egg it" is to plug away at something. "Ham and eggs" or "ham and egger" can also refer to an ordinary, unskilled or mediocre person. A specific example of this is a boxer "with a minimum of talent"; "ham and egger" occurs in this context in the original "Rocky" film, filmed in 1975, when Rocky downplays his chances as a title contender, referring to himself as