That perfectly round McMuffin egg has an interesting origin story. Here’s how McDonald’s makes its iconic breakfast sandwiches—and how one portable take on Eggs Benedict helped change fast-food breakfast forever.
There are foods that look carefully engineered, and then there’s the McMuffin: a breakfast sandwich so perfectly stacked that the egg appears to have been created as part of a geometry assignment.
That round egg isn’t carved from a mysterious egg-like product or delivered to McDonald’s in frozen little discs. Actually, for an Egg McMuffin or Sausage McMuffin with Egg, a real egg gets cracked into a circular Teflon ring on the grill, which gives it that unnervingly tidy shape.
The toasted English muffin is layered with cheese and either Canadian bacon or a seasoned sausage patty. Simple, portable, and delicious.
The Egg McMuffin Started as Eggs Benedict
The McMuffin story begins with Herb Peterson, a McDonald’s franchisee in Santa Barbara, California.
Peterson was a devoted Eggs Benedict fan who wanted a handheld version he could actually serve at a fast-food counter. Hollandaise was too messy, so he swapped it for a slice of cheese, added Canadian bacon, and cooked the egg in a specially designed ring made by a local blacksmith. He then presented it to McDonald’s founder, Ray Kroc, in 1972. And Kroc, who was initially skeptical, finally tried one and was immediately sold.
The sandwich hit test markets in 1972 and went national in 1975. It didn’t just give people something new to order. It turned McDonald’s into a breakfast destination.
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Then Came the Sausage
The Sausage McMuffin took the same formula and made it richer. A hot sausage patty and melted American cheese on a toasted English muffin. Add a freshly cracked round egg, and you get the Sausage McMuffin with Egg (the original’s tastier cousin IMO!).
The McMuffin wasn’t born from culinary ambition. It was the opposite. Peterson took a sit-down brunch dish, stripped out everything that wouldn’t survive a drive-through window, and rebuilt it as something people could hold in one hand.
More than 50 years later, that little egg ring is still doing its job.
Find out more about the history of the McMuffin and how it’s made: How Egg McMuffins Are Made: Inside McDonald’s Breakfast Supply Chain
