Breakfast

United States

A Dutch baby pancake is a large, fluffy pancake baked in the oven, usually in a cast-iron skillet. It's made from a simple batter of eggs, flour, milk, and sugar. When baked, it puffs up dramatically around the edges, creating a light, airy texture with crispy edges and a custard-like center. It is typically served with powdered sugar, fresh fruit, syrup, or lemon juice. However, Dutch baby pancake can also made as a savory dish. The Dutch baby pancake has American origins and was popularized in the early 1900s by a restaurant called Manca's Caf&eacute; in Seattle. The name "Dutch Baby" is believed to be a corruption of "Deutsch," as the dish is similar to German pancakes. Unlike traditional pancakes, it is baked in the oven, causing it to puff up dramatically. Its unique texture and dramatic presentation have made it a beloved brunch dish in the United States.

Dutch baby pancake

An egg sandwich is an internationally popular breakfast staple that typically consists of eggs between slices of bread. The sandwich is usually enriched with cheese, and it's often complemented with some kind of meat such as cold cuts or sausage meat. Nowadays, there are numerous variations on this sandwich, but it is believed that one of the first egg sandwiches was made in the early 19th century in East London by street vendors who wanted to earn some money and feed the hungry factory workers in the process. Those sandwiches were made with fried eggs, meat, and sometimes cheese, sandwiched between halves of a soft roll that's called a bap. These days, the additions to the egg sandwich include ingredients such as avocados, bacon, pork roll, chicken, or watercress.

Egg sandwich

Half a toasted English muffin, a round of Canadian bacon or ham, a poached egg and a spoonful of hollandaise: eggs Benedict is the New York brunch dish that tests three techniques on one plate and lets you see which the kitchen cannot do. Two origin stories compete, both from Manhattan in the 1890s: one credits a hungover stockbroker named Lemuel Benedict ordering the combination at the Waldorf, the other a regular at Delmonico's named Mrs LeGrand Benedict, and neither can be proved. What is certain is that the dish spread through hotel breakfast rooms in the first half of the twentieth century and became the anchor of the American brunch menu after the 1960s. Its variations follow a pattern: Florentine with spinach, Royale with smoked salmon, Chesapeake with crab cake, and so on, each swapping the meat and keeping the muffin, the egg and the sauce.

The hollandaise is the hard part and the one most often faked. Egg yolks are whisked with a little water or lemon juice over gentle heat until thick and pale, then warm clarified butter is added slowly, whisking, until the sauce is glossy and coats a spoon; it is finished with lemon, salt and a pinch of cayenne and held warm, never hot, for no more than an hour. The eggs are poached in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar, three minutes for a set white and a liquid yolk, and trimmed of their ragged edges. The muffin is split with a fork, not a knife, so the surface is craggy, and toasted; the bacon is warmed in a pan until the edges colour. Assembly is fast: muffin, meat, egg, a generous spoon of hollandaise, a dusting of paprika or chives, and the plate goes out immediately because a poached egg does not wait.

Cut the egg first: the yolk should run and the white should be fully set, with no clear jelly around it. Then taste the hollandaise on its own: it should be warm, buttery and sharp with lemon, thick enough to sit on the egg without sliding off, and it should not taste of raw egg or of nothing. Mark down a sauce that has split into oily curds, a sauce from a packet or made with a blender shortcut that tastes mainly of butter, a hard yolk, a cold muffin, a soggy muffin that was topped too early, and ham cut so thin it vanishes. Two eggs is a portion. Hash browns or potatoes on the side are standard and do not count. A kitchen that can send out a Benedict with the sauce glossy and the yolk running at eleven on a Sunday morning, under pressure, has earned a high score.

Eggs Benedict

Eggs Florentine is the brunch dish of poached eggs set on a bed of wilted spinach on a toasted English muffin and covered in hollandaise, the vegetarian member of the eggs Benedict family in which spinach takes the place of ham or bacon. The name follows the French kitchen convention in which "à la florentine" means served with spinach, a usage that goes back to the court cooks of Catherine de' Medici and has nothing to do with any dish eaten in Florence. Older French versions sit the eggs on creamed spinach and finish them with a cheese-enriched Mornay sauce under the grill; the hollandaise-and-muffin form is American, a twentieth-century hotel and diner adaptation, and it is now the standard reading of the name on brunch menus from New York to Sydney, usually offered alongside Benedict and the smoked-salmon Royale.

Each of the four parts is a separate job done to the minute. The spinach is washed, wilted in a hot pan with butter and a little garlic or shallot for under a minute, seasoned with salt, pepper and a scrape of nutmeg, then squeezed hard in a sieve so no water reaches the muffin; some kitchens stir in a spoon of cream, which brings it closer to the French original. The eggs are poached in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar for about three minutes, whites fully set and yolks liquid, and drained on a cloth. The hollandaise is egg yolks whisked over gentle heat with a reduction of vinegar or lemon until thick, then clarified butter added slowly until the sauce is glossy and holds a ribbon; it is seasoned with lemon and salt and kept warm, not hot, because it splits above about 70°C. The muffin is split, toasted and buttered, the spinach piled on, the egg set on top and the sauce spooned over to coat.

Cut through the egg first: the yolk should run into the spinach and the muffin, and the white should be fully opaque. The spinach should be hot, seasoned and dry enough that the muffin stays crisp underneath, with a clear nutmeg note; the hollandaise should be thick, smooth, pale yellow and sharp with lemon, in a quantity that coats the egg without pooling across the plate. Mark down a muffin gone soggy under wet spinach, which is the most common fault, hard yolks, a hollandaise that is grainy, split, or so thick it sits like custard, a sauce that tastes only of butter with no acid, and a dish built on frozen spinach, which is grey and stringy and gives itself away. A hollandaise from a packet or a squeeze bottle is a failure on its own; a Mornay version is legitimate but should be named.

Eggs Florentine

Eggs Hussarde is a New Orleans dish that was originally made with poached eggs which have been placed on top of Holland rusks, red wine reduction sauce (Marchand de vin), and Canadian bacon. Finally, the concoction was topped with Hollandaise sauce. Nowadays, English muffins are often used instead of Holland rusks. The dish is named after 15th-century Hungarian mercenaries known as hussars, and it was invented in a restaurant called Brennan&rsquo;s, where it's typically served for breakfast.

Eggs Hussarde

Eggs Neptune is an American dish consisting of a split English muffin with crab meat, poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce sandwiched in between. The dish is a variation on eggs Benedict, and crab meat is used as a replacement for ham or bacon. Eggs Neptune is traditionally served for breakfast, and it is especially popular on Father's Day and Mother's Day.

Eggs Neptune

Eggy bread is the British version of French toast. Also known as Poor Knights of Windsor, the dish is usually prepared with a combination of crustless sandwich bread, milk, icing sugar, eggs, butter, cinnamon, and often a bit of sherry and strawberry jam. The bread slices are soaked in a whisked mixture of icing sugar, milk, sherry, and eggs. The bread is then pan-fried in butter until browned on both sides. Once cooked, the bread is sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, then topped with strawberry jam or blackberry compote, if desired. Eggy bread is typically served as a breakfast or dessert.

Eggy bread

Germany

Eierkuchen are traditional German pancakes made by combining eggs, flour, milk, butter, baking powder, sugar, and salt. The batter is typically flavored with vanilla extract or cinnamon, although the sugar and other sweet flavorings may be omitted to make a savory version of these pancakes. A layer of batter is poured into melted butter or oil using a ladle, making sure the mixture covers the bottom of the pan forming a thin and round pancake. The pancakes are cooked on both sides until nicely browned, and they are then enjoyed while still warm, usually slathered with applesauce, fruit preserves, jams, or chocolate-hazelnut spreads. Also known as pfannkuchen, this simple treat is traditionally eaten for breakfast or as a sweet snack at any time of the day.

Eierkuchen

Argentina

Hailing from Argentina, empanada catamarque&ntilde;a is an empanada variety characterized by its garlicky kick. The empanadas are typically made with beef or goat meat, onions, and garlic. Raisins and green olives are also often included in these empanadas for extra flavor and texture. Baked until golden brown, these flavorful parcels are best when served with local beverages.

Empanada Catamarqueña

Spain

A disc of dough folded over a savoury filling, sealed along the curved edge with a rope of pinched crimps and baked or fried: the empanada is Spain's portable pie, taken across the Atlantic in the sixteenth century and now claimed with more passion by Argentina than by the country that named it. The Galician original is a large flat pie of yeasted bread dough, filled with tuna, peppers and onion or with pork, cut into squares and eaten cold at fairs. The hand-sized half-moon is the form that spread: Argentina has a dozen provincial styles, Salta with potato and chilli, Tucumán with hand-cut beef and lemon, Mendoza with olive and egg; Chile bakes the pino with beef, onion, raisin, olive and a wedge of hard egg; Colombia fries a corn-dough pocket. The crimp, the repulgue, tells a regular which filling is inside before the first bite.

The dough for the baked Argentine style is flour, lard or butter, warm water and salt, worked just enough to come together and rested, then rolled thin and cut into rounds of twelve to fifteen centimetres. The classic filling, carne cortada a cuchillo, is beef diced small by hand rather than minced, cooked with plenty of onion softened in beef fat, sweet paprika, cumin, a little chilli and spring onion, then cooled overnight so the fat sets and the filling can be portioned without leaking; chopped hard-boiled egg and green olive go in at assembly. A spoonful sits on each round, the edge is moistened, folded and sealed with a fork or with the twisted repulgue, and the empanadas are brushed with egg and baked hot, around 220°C, for twelve to fifteen minutes until gold, or deep-fried in beef fat until blistered. They are eaten in the hand, hot, with chimichurri or on their own.

Judge the crimp first: it should be tight and even, with no leaks, because a filling that has run out in the oven dries both pastry and meat. The pastry should be thin, crisp at the edge and tender elsewhere, flaking slightly when baked or blistered and dry when fried, never greasy or doughy. The filling should be juicy, with the fat from the onion and beef pooling slightly when the empanada is bitten, and should taste of its ingredients, with cumin and paprika as a background rather than a dust. Mark down minced beef in a style that calls for hand-cut, a filling that is dry or sparse, a thick pastry that outweighs the meat, a cold centre from a reheated batch, and sweet, cakey dough. The egg and olive in a pino are not optional. Three is a meal, and the first one should burn your fingers.

Empanadas

Argentine empanadas are hand-sized baked or fried pastries with a soft wheat dough folded over a savoury filling and sealed with a rope-like crimp called the repulgue, whose pattern tells you what is inside. The classic is carne, a filling of hand-cut or minced beef cooked with onion, cumin, paprika and sometimes hard-boiled egg, olive and raisin, and every province argues for its own version: Salta's are small, spicy, with potato and spring onion; Tucumán's use matambre cut by knife and are baked in a clay oven; Mendoza's add olive and more onion; and Córdoba's include a little sugar in the dough and sometimes in the filling. Beyond beef the standard menu runs to ham and cheese, chicken, humita of creamed corn, spinach, and the sweet quince or dulce de leche. They are the national snack and party food, ordered by the dozen from specialist shops, and the Tucumán festival each September crowns a champion.

The dough is flour, beef fat or lard, salt and warm water, kneaded briefly and rested, then rolled into discs of twelve to fifteen centimetres; most shops and home cooks now buy the discs ready-made, and the honest ones say so. The beef filling is cooked the day before so the fat sets: onion softened in plenty of fat, the beef added and cooked only until it loses its rawness, then cumin, sweet paprika, a little chilli, salt, and the hard-boiled egg and olive folded in once cool. A spoonful goes in the centre of each disc, the edges are moistened, folded over and crimped in a repulgue of a dozen or more folds that seals tightly so the fat does not leak. They are baked at about 220°C for fifteen to twenty minutes until golden, often brushed with egg, or fried in beef fat in the north-west; a good shop marks each flavour with a different crimp so they can be told apart on the tray.

Judge them in the hand first: the dough should be thin enough to show the filling's shape, golden and slightly flaky from the fat, with no cracks and no raw pale seam at the fold. Bite and the beef filling should be juicy enough to drip a little, which is the whole point of cooking it in fat, with the onion sweet and the cumin clear, the meat in pieces rather than a paste, and the egg and olive in proportion. Mark down a dry, crumbly filling, which means lean mince or overcooking, a thick bready crust, a greasy underside from a cool oven, a filling that is mostly onion, a repulgue that has burst and let the juice run out, and empanadas that have been reheated, which show as a tough, dull dough. A dozen should take two hands and no cutlery, and the carne should be judged before any other flavour.

Empanadas Argentinas

Although empanadas are traditionally associated with savory fillings, in the case of empanada de manzana the filling is a sweet combination of cinnamon-spiced apples. Sliced, preferably tart apples are wrapped inside the buttery dough, shaped in small crescent forms and baked until golden and crispy. Whether they are served as a dessert, a filling sweet breakfast, or a light afternoon snack, empanadas de manzana are a signature treat of the Chilo&eacute; Island and can occasionally be found in traditional Mexican cuisine.

Empanadas de manzana

Enfrijolada is a Mexican dish consisting of fresh corn tortillas smothered with beans in their liquid. Fillings and toppings vary from one cook to another since this dish is popular throughout Mexico due to its nutritive value and inexpensive ingredients. Some of the choices for the filling include shredded cheese, chicken, and various vegetables. The name of the dish means in bean sauce, and the dish is usually consumed for breakfast.

Enfrijolada

Bacon, sausages, eggs, grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, black pudding and toast or fried bread, all on one plate with a pot of tea: the full English breakfast is less a recipe than a roll call, and every café, hotel and household argues about which members are compulsory. The form took shape in the country houses of the Victorian era, where the breakfast sideboard was a display of wealth, and it was carried into the twentieth century by railway hotels and then by the working-class caff, where it became a cheap, filling start to a shift. Scotland adds tattie scones and sometimes haggis, Ireland white pudding and soda bread, Wales laverbread and cockles, and the Ulster fry has its own rules. The phrase full English on a menu means all of it; a plate missing black pudding or beans is a partial English and should be sold as one.

Nothing on the plate is difficult and everything on it is easy to do badly, because it is eight things that finish at different times. The bacon is back bacon, grilled or fried until the fat is rendered and the edge crisp while the eye stays tender; the sausages are pork, cooked slowly so they brown all round without splitting; the eggs are fried in the bacon fat to a set white and runny yolk, or scrambled soft or poached; the tomato is halved and grilled until it slumps; the mushrooms are fried in butter until they stop releasing water; the beans are heated, not boiled to a paste; the black pudding is sliced thick and fried until the edges crisp; the toast is made last and buttered hot. Fried bread, cooked in the pan fat until golden on both sides, is the traditional carbohydrate and the one most often skipped. HP or ketchup go on the table, not the plate.

Judge the components one at a time and then the plate. Mark up bacon with crisp fat and no grey water, sausages with a snap and some coarse texture, eggs with unbroken yolks, mushrooms that are browned rather than boiled, and toast that is still warm. Mark down a plate assembled from a hot cabinet, watery tomato, beans flooding into the eggs, pale sausages that taste mainly of rusk, bacon that is soft and pink, cold toast, and anything fried in old oil. Portions are not the point; a plate with six good things beats one with ten tired ones. The tea should be strong and in a pot. A breakfast that arrives all hot at the same time is the mark of a kitchen that has timed it, which is the whole skill.

English breakfast

Ensaimada de Mallorca is a spiral-shaped sweet pastry made with yeast dough that is combined with eggs and lard. This type of pastry has been made on the island of Mallorca since the 17th century and the recipe has remained unchanged to this day. The word ensa&iuml;mada comes from sa&iuml;m, meaning lard, which is the essential ingredient in this recipe. The base recipe for ensaimada de Mallorca is very simple and includes only flour, sugar, eggs, yeast, and water. However, there are many variations of this recipe which had been developed during the centuries, including the likes of those with pumpkin, cream, or chocolate.

Ensaïmada de Mallorca

Entomatadas is a Mexican specialty dish consisting of filled tortillas doused in a rich tomato sauce. Tomatoes, onions, and garlic are the main ingredients of every tomato sauce recipe and can be enriched with various other ingredients, spices, and herbs, such as chili peppers, cloves, and stock, to name a few. The corn tortillas are lightly fried so they soften a bit, then usually filled with shredded chicken, refried beans, cheese (queso fresco), or chunks of beef, and poured over with the tomato sauce. When served, entomatadas are typically topped with sour cream, sliced onions, fresh parsley/cilantro, or cheese. Entomatadas is traditionally a breakfast dish but can be served any time of day.

Entomatadas

Fatira is a traditional street food item that is commonly consumed for breakfast, consisting of a large, crispy, wheat flour pancake. It is traditionally served with scrambled eggs, honey, or both. Fatira is often cut into smaller pieces, and it is especially popular during Eid-al-Fitr in Ethiopia.

Fatira

Fattah bi-al-lahm is a Syrian dish that consists of fried ground meat and nuts on a bed of crispy pieces of pita bread, boiled chickpeas, and garlicky yogurt sauce. The dish is typically assembled in layers in a deep serving dish or a casserole. Fried or toasted bits of pita bread are topped with boiled chickpeas and some chickpea stock, drizzled with tahini-yogurt sauce flavored with garlic, covered with a mixture of fried ground beef or lamb and pine nuts, and then finished off with another drizzling of yogurt sauce, some chopped parsley, and a sprinkling of fried nuts. This Syrian specialty is usually consumed for breakfast or served as a side dish.

Fattah bi-al-lahm

Fattah bi-as-samna is a Syrian dish consisting of flatbread pieces, fat, honey, and dates. It is usually made with freshly baked pita bread, which is torn into small pieces, covered with hot, melted fat, typically ghee, drizzled with honey, and then kneaded by hand. This simple dish is usually topped with dates and eaten for breakfast or as a light meal in the evening. Fattah bi-as-simna is a version of fatteh, a dish that is based on fresh, toasted, or stale pieces of flatbread combined with a variety of additions. The dish derives its name from fattah or fatteh, meaning to break or to crumble something into small pieces, which is basically how this dish is prepared - tearing the flatbread into pieces before combining it with other ingredients.

Fattah bi-as-samna

Fattah bi-az-zayt is a Syrian dish typically made with flatbread and chickpeas, topped with an oil-based mixture. It is a version of fattah or fatteh, a dish which combines fresh, toasted, or stale flatbread with a variety of other ingredients and is typically topped with a yogurt-based sauce. This fattah version uses a type of oil mixture instead of the usual yogurt-based sauce. In a dish or a casserole, salted and crunchy roasted pieces of pita bread are layered evenly, topped with cooked chickpeas, and then covered with a liquid composed of oil, chickpea stock, garlic, and baking powder. Olive oil, corn oil, and vegetable oil are the typical oil choices when preparing this dish. This simple fattah is dusted with ground cumin and consumed warm, usually for breakfast.

Breakfast

Dutch baby pancake

Egg sandwich

Eggs Benedict 2 reviews

Eggs Florentine 3 reviews

Eggs Hussarde

Eggs Neptune

Eggy bread

Eierkuchen

Empanada Catamarqueña

Empanadas 1 review

Empanadas Argentinas 1 review

Empanadas de manzana

Enfrijolada

English breakfast 1 review

Ensaïmada de Mallorca

Entomatadas

Fatira

Fattah bi-al-lahm

Fattah bi-as-samna

Fattah bi-az-zayt

Eggs Benedict (2)2 reviews

Eggs Florentine (3)3 reviews

Empanadas (1)1 review

Empanadas Argentinas (1)1 review

English breakfast (1)1 review

Eggs Benedict 2 reviews

Eggs Florentine 3 reviews

Empanadas 1 review

Empanadas Argentinas 1 review

English breakfast 1 review