Mmm…do you smell that? That’s the smell of breakfast sizzling on March 2, Egg McMuffin Day. Eating a filling breakfast of an egg with melted cheese and a slice of ham nesting in the middle of a warm, buttered muffin is great way to combat a case of the Mondays (or Tuesdays, Wednesdays, really any day ending in Y). Do we even have to say more?
HISTORY OF NATIONAL EGG MCMUFFIN DAY
Apparently, the Egg McMuffin didn’t just always exist. In fact, when it was invented in 1972, the sandwich was a game changer for breakfast everywhere. According to the then president of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc’s, 1977 autobiography Grinding it Out: The making of McDonald’s, it all began when Herb Peterson and his assistant Donald Greadel asked Kroc to check something out, without giving any details about what it was. While in the process of trying to create their own version of a fast-food eggs Benedict, they accidentally created what is credited as the first ever breakfast sandwich. That’s right folks, everything you love about the classic breakfast sandwich wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the McDonald’s company and a random, but tasty, bout of experimentation!
The sandwich that Peterson and Greadel presented to Kroc consisted of an egg that had been strategically cooked and formed in Teflon circle with the yolk purposefully broken, laid on top of a slice of cheese melted perfectly and topped with a slice of grilled ham, served opened face on a toasted and buttered English muffin. Patty Turner, the wife of a McDonald’s executive, came up with the name that we all know the sandwich by today: the Egg McMuffin.
The invention of the Egg McMuffin began an entirely new era for fast-food, moving McDonald’s from being solely a burger joint to also a one-stop shop for your on-the-go, hot morning breakfast. The very first Egg McMuffin was sold at the Belleville, New Jersey location within the same year. And though it took nearly three years for the sandwich to be completely integrated within the McDonald’s system, it was already receiving praise through TIME as being an example of how the fast-food chain “pays close attention to suggestions from behind the counter.”
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