Alfred Hitchcock's Favorite Breakfast Meal Was A Classic

Famous for movies such as "Psycho," "Rear Window," "Vertigo," and "Dial M for Murder," film-maker and director Alfred Hitchcock was known as the master of suspense. He also had a voracious appetite and was said to enjoy multiple courses of rich, hearty dishes when dining out, being a particular fan of the Hollywood restaurants Chasen's and Romanoff's. But his favorite breakfast meal — quiche Lorraine — was decidedly simple, and the director even had his own preferred recipe for the classic dish.

While a traditional quiche Lorraine features Gruyère cheese and smoky bacon in a savory custard made with heavy cream and beaten egg, Hitchcock's recipe — which features in "The Dead Celebrity Cookbook" — was slightly different. His version replaced the bacon with ham and omitted the cheese, and the filling was made using hot milk instead of cream. This mixture was flavored with spicy cayenne and nutmeg (which is also a great ingredient for elevating cream sauces) and poured into a homemade buttery pie crust before being baked until set.

Hitchcock was so interested in food that it often made its way into his films, and his beloved quiche Lorraine was no exception, making a guest appearance served up by Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief." However, despite his love of quiche, Hitchcock also had a food phobia that made this particular dairy dish a rather unusual choice: He feared eggs.

Alfred Hitchcock's culinary fear, known as ovophobia, seemed to center especially around the oozing golden yolk. "Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid?" he asked journalist Oriana Fallaci in the 1960s (via Telegraph). "Blood is jolly, red," he added. "But egg yolk is yellow, revolting." Perhaps he would have preferred eggs with a white yolk (which are perfectly safe to eat) instead.

In addition to his favorite recipe for quiche Lorraine, which contained four whole eggs in the filling as well as a yolk in the crust, Hitchcock also had a soft spot for other egg dishes, such as soufflé, despite his fear. In an audio interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he said the reason for this was that he didn't mind eggs "as long as they're disguised" (via Facebook). However, Hitchcock also told Fallaci that he couldn't "bear to stay in the kitchen" when his wife was making a soufflé because the suspense was too much for him: "Will it rise? Won't it rise?" he asked (via Scraps From The Loft).

Soufflé, incidentally, also makes a rather dark appearance in another of Hitchcock's films, "The Perfect Murder," where it is intended to be served with a secret deadly ingredient: ground glass. The murderous plot doesn't quite go to plan, though, and the glass ends up in a homemade omelet instead. The director's relationship with eggs certainly seems complicated.