Let's look at the history of the McDonald's Egg McMuffins!

Egg McMuffin is the signature breakfast item of the iconic fast food American brand, McDonald’s. The sound that crash onto your ears at 11 a.m. on Tuesday at McDonald’s will usually include muffled noises of people gorging down on their Egg McMuffins. It is in fact a victory cry for thousands of McMuffin lovers, who for the first time in 43 years, can now officially consume their favorite breakfast item at whatever time seems suitable for them.

As we celebrate the victory of Egg McMuffins over the oppressively limited mealtimes, it is worth noting that McDonald’s is not the first fast food company to offer the dish made up of delectable portions of meat, egg, bread, and cheese. The iconic breakfast sandwiches had graced American mouths long before the golden arches were seen in the skyline.

The growing popularity of the sandwich parallels the emergence of overworked and hungry industrial workers in the US during the 19th century. The success of the breakfast sandwich rests on two main factors: everyone is too busy to make their own breakfast, but everyone needs to have breakfast.

In order to understand the origin of Egg McMuffins, we have to go back in time to the misty streets of East London during the early 1800s, according to Heather Arndt-Anderson, the breakfast historian. Seeing the need for a quick bite among the hoards of industry workers, street vendors set up a stall to serve breakfast to them. The workers would swiftly sip a cup of coffee, hand back the mug to the vendor, and then walked away with the sandwich in hand.

McDonald’s started rolling out the sandwich after Taylor Tilghman, the owner of a franchise in Santa Barbara, California, started serving Egg McMuffins as a morning breakfast sandwich. Tilghman had made the offer without the approval and permission of the corporate management, and was later reprimanded and even threatened with the termination of the agreement.

However, when the news about the breach of agreement was presented before the then President Ray Kroc, he actually welcomed the initiative. Kroc later revealed that Egg McMuffin opened up a whole new chapter of potential business for McDonald’s, that is, the breakfast trade.

Soon after, McDonald’s started to serve Egg McMuffins as a breakfast dish to the customers.

The first ever McDonald’s corporate Egg McMuffin was served at Belleville, New Jersey McDonald’s branch in 1972. Outside the US, McDonald’s Egg Muffins were being served round the clock. However, in the US, the sandwich was restricted to the breakfast menu only. This was mainly due to the fact that the temperature required to cook beef patties is different from the temperature at which eggs are cooked, according the Herb Peterson in a special episode of Unwrapped. This would require a separate grill to prepare the dish resulting in increased operational costs. As a result, McDonald’s had decided to keep its Egg McMuffin offering separatefrom its other offerings.

McDonald’s is now turning America’s favorite breakfast dish into an all-day option. According to Arndt-Anderson, the food historian: “There’s kind of a long history of breakfast being part of fast food menus. When restaurants are suffering economically they know they can rely on breakfast to keep them afloat.”