You've likely eaten all five of these, probably dozens of times, and never once stopped mid-bite to ask, "Who was Benedict?" or "Why Rockefeller?" The answers are often stranger than the food.
Let's dive into the strange stories behind 5 foods named after real people!
The person: Lemuel Benedict, a retired Wall Street stockbroker.
In 1942, Benedict told The New Yorker that 48 years earlier, he'd walked into the dining room of the old Waldorf Hotel in Manhattan nursing a serious hangover. He ordered buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs, and what he called "a hooker of hollandaise sauce."
Legendary maître d'hôtel Oscar Tschirky liked it enough to put it on the Waldorf's breakfast and lunch menus, swapping the toast for a toasted English muffin and the bacon for ham. That's the version you order at brunch today!
Believe It or Not!, there's a rival claim. Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer included a recipe for "Eggs à la Benedick" in his cookbook The Epicurean , and a 1967 letter to The New York Times Magazine credited the dish to a different couple entirely, Mr. and Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, Delmonico's regulars who got bored with the menu one Saturday. Food historians still argue about it.
The myth we can kill right now: It has nothing to do with Benedict Arnold.
The person: John D. Rockefeller, who had no hand in creating it; the name was borrowed, not earned in the kitchen.
In 1889, at Antoine's in New Orleans, chef Jules Alciatore, son of founder Antoine Alciatore, ran short on the imported snails his escargot dish required. Gulf oysters were plentiful and cheap, so he swapped them in and built a dark green herb sauce to go on top.
The sauce was so rich that Alciatore reached for the richest name in America: Rockefeller.
Believe It or Not!, the recipe has never been published. Alciatore took the exact proportions to his grave, and Antoine's has guarded it for more than a century.
In 1986, author William Poundstone had a takeout order analyzed in a laboratory for his book Bigger Secrets . The lab identified parsley, pureed celery, scallions or chives, olive oil, and capers.
The person: Reverend Sylvester Graham (1794–1851), a Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer from Connecticut.
Graham believed that rich food, meat, spices, coffee, and white flour inflamed the body's appetites, sexual ones very much included. His prescribed regimen was aggressively bland: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, cold water, hard mattresses, open windows, and regular bathing.
Around 1829, he began promoting coarsely ground, unsifted whole wheat, graham flour, and the bread and crackers made from it. The original graham cracker contained no fat and no refined sugar.
Believe It or Not!, Graham's ideas made him enemies. In 1837, Boston's bakers and butchers were angry enough about his attacks on white bread and meat that they mobbed him at his hotel.
He would also have hated the modern product. Today's graham crackers are made with refined flour and sweeteners.
One caveat: Historians disagree on whether Graham personally baked the first cracker in 1829 or whether commercial bakers created it later using his flour.
The person: Dr. James Henry Salisbury, born 1823 near Cortland, New York.
Salisbury served as a physician during the Civil War, when digestive diseases like dysentery killed more soldiers than combat did. He became convinced the culprit was diet, specifically vegetables and starches, which he believed fermented in the gut and produced toxins responsible for everything from tuberculosis to tumors.
His fix: a "muscle pulp of beef." Lean chopped beef, shaped into cakes, broiled, and seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. He recommended eating it three times a day, chased with hot water.
Believe It or Not!, the term "Salisbury steak" had been in use since the 1890s, but World War I gave it a massive boost.
The person: Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya (1895–1975), a maître d' in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico.
Piedras Negras sits directly across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, and its restaurants drew a steady American crowd. One afternoon in the early 1940s, a group of U.S. military wives came into the Victory Club looking for a snack. The cook was nowhere to be found.
Anaya went into the kitchen and improvised with what was in reach: fried corn tortillas, shredded cheese, and sliced jalapeños, run under heat until the cheese melted. Asked what it was called, he gave it his own nickname—Nacho's Special .
Believe It or Not!, Anaya later complicated his own legend. In a 1961 interview, he said the dish was actually born at a different restaurant, El Moderno. And the date is genuinely contested: sources put it at 1940 or 1943 depending on which account they follow.
What isn't in dispute is the name. Every stadium tray of nachos on Earth is named after one man's nickname.
The world is full of ordinary things with unbelievable backstories. Find more of them at a Ripley's Believe It or Not! near you, or pre-order the newest annual, Ripley's Believe It or Not! Wired Into Weird .
Jordan Neese
Lover of all things weird and odd, Jordan is a Junior Editor for Ripley Publishing. From curating co…
By this author
Hold the Anchovies, Pass the Paintbrush: This Phoenix Pizza Maker Paints on Cheese
Hot Dogs by the Numbers: Fourth of July Traditions
Why Do We Feel Sleepy After Thanksgiving Dinner?
