Brunch

Maytag Blue cheese, made by the same family that became world famous for its appliances, is handmade from cow's milk and has a peppery, piquant flavor. Start this sandwich about an hour in advance so the chicken has time to marinate. This is an easy recipe to double or triple for a larger group, and the chicken can be made ahead. I like to serve this sandwich on raisin pumpernickel bread, but feel free to use another favorite loaf.

A generous handful of mint leaves adds a tongue-tingling surprise, reinforcing this salad's zesty freshness.

If you have difficulty finding buster crabs or small soft shells, you can use large soft shell crabs, quartered, and they'll still make a great dish.

Here's a whole-grain update of that longtime British favorite, the scone. Serve it with hot tea at any time of the day or evening.

If you make this whole recipe, you will have enough to feed a crowd, plus you will have half of a pineapple and perhaps half of a papaya left over. The salsa is especially good atop grilled chicken or fish.

These buns can be assembled the night before, needing only a final rise before baking.

Here's a soufflé that can stand up for itself. Michel Richard, of Citronelle in Washington, D.C., ignores tales about soufflés that collapse when the oven is opened (a myth). Instead, he focuses on what matters: a well-seasoned base that infuses the soufflé with flavor, and properly whipped whites that achieve optimum volume as they bake. Whip the whites until firm, but stop before they get too stiff, says Richard, or the soufflé will be grainy. And quell your jitters with his 21st-century trick: Add xanthan gum to the whites. It acts as a stabilizer— resulting in the most dramatic soufflé we've made in a while.

This versatile dough is ideally made in a stand mixer, but a food processor works surprisingly well, too.

The success of this simple soup depends on using the freshest watercress available. Choose the full-grown, thick-stemmed variety; it has more of the green's characteristic bold, peppery flavor.

A simple addition to the master dough results in deliciously scented rolls.

Swedish pearl sugar stands in for coarse salt in this sweet take on the soft pretzel.

Get extra-festive with this buttery loaf studded with colorful eggs.

These tasty tarts are easy to bring to a picnic or potluck dinner. Serve one for dessert—and one for breakfast the next day. Dried California apricots are dark orange and have a tangier, more intense flavor than Turkish ones.

No cream is necessary in this soup, just vegetables and broth puréed to velvety perfection.

Skip the scones and biscuits for brunch; serve this sweet and beautiful take on focaccia instead.

These golden, crunchy croissants that we permit ourselves to enjoy without the slightest remorse on Sunday mornings are not as French as you might think. These pastries, known in French as viennoiserie, indeed originated from seventeenth-century Vienna. In 1683, the inhabitants of the Austrian capital suffered an attack led by the forces of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa. After months of a terrible siege, they were liberated by Charles V of Lorraine and Jan Sobieski, King of Poland. This victory enabled the Hapsburgs to recover their territories of Hungary and Croatia, and the bakers made a commemorative pastry in the form of a crescent moon, the symbol of the Ottoman Empire. Folk history even accords the bakers a crucial role in reversing the battle situation. As they worked during the night, they heard the sound of the Turkish soldiers preparing a new assault and sounded the alarm. Their version of the croissant was nevertheless closer to the brioche than the croissant that we know today. A century later, Marie-Antoinette is said to have brought this delicacy from her native city to introduce it to the French court. Giles MacDonogh, however, author of a biography of Brillat-Savarin, offers a version that corresponds more closely with the dates when the croissant appeared in France (around 1900). He mentions the arrival in Paris, in 1838, of an Austrian named Auguste Zang, who opened a Viennese bakery at 92 rue Richelieu, only a few numbers away from the Brillat-Savarin building. "The business took off slowly," he explains, but eventually his kipferl cookies began to sell, literally "like hot cakes." The croissant was born. All of his croissants came out of a brand-new steam oven, above which the inscription was written La main de l'homme n'y a pas touché. (No human hand has touched them.) In those days, industrial processes inspired trust! Nowadays, any croissant untouched by human hand is suspect. The dough needs to be kneaded gently, then vigorously, until it can be detached from marble, and pieces of it shaped into a ball. The surface of each ball is then dried with a sprinkling of flour and covered with a damp cloth. Then the waiting begins. The dough is mixed with worked butter, punched down, then folded, turned, and set to rise again. This craftsmanship is becoming rarer, and the challenge is to live up to the legend, to match the taste of these handmade croissants, with their melting, silky layers of pastry.

Although Nelly Custis omitted sugar in her recipe for these lovely, delicate pancakes, published cookbooks of the period often suggested "strewing" sugar over them before sending them to the table. E. Smith, for one, additionally recommended garnishing them with orange, a suggestion also included here. This recipe can be readily doubled.

This waffle recipe is a ham and cheese sandwich disguised as the greatest brunch dish of all time.