[plastic-enjoyer]

You have a whole strand of German and French cultural pessimism that foresaw the convergence of mass media to the current point to some degree.

> Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste.

I would go so far to say, that even if people tasted the real thing, they would prefer the artificial product. For example, we have Sauce Hollondaise in my country, and most people were probably raised on the convenience product. The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. So, I've noticed that even if people taste the 'real' sauce, they prefer the convenience product.

[fireflash38]

Maple syrup is a big one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to even fancy breakfast restaurants and had real maple syrup.

Cracker barrel used to, decades ago now. It's all garbage corn syrup now. I'd rather not have syrup at all than that cloying, thick, gross stuff.

[barbs]

Heh, I thought of maple syrup as well. And I'm ashamed to say I prefer the fake stuff! Although it's likely because it's what I had as a child, so there's a strong nostalgia factor.

[nick__m]

What's the grade of the maple syrup you tried ? (the new grading system is stupid everything is grade A with a color name)

In my opinion,

The A golden is light and subtle, I don't know what it's for; it's the variety we sell in tourists, and to peoples that likes fancy bottles and higher prices!

The A amber is great as a condiment in small quantities, for pancakes it's the best.

The A dark is the best for cooking deserts.

And the A very dark is my favorite for cooking meats like ham and ribs.

So if you only tasted the A golden I can see why you would prefer the fake syrup if you were raised on that stuff. But I would be surprised if you prefer the fake stuff to the A dark.

[0xffff2]

I grew up with the fake stuff, and have lately done quite a bit of taste testing of the various grades of real stuff. Grade A golden is the only one with a distinct enough difference in flavor for me to care, and even then it's very much an acquired taste, not immediately and distinctly better. Given the stark price difference, my conclusion is that the maple syrup elitism is a silly hobby horse for people with too much money.

[nick__m]

There are 2 maple grove owner in my extended family (both are my uncles one on my father side and one on my mother side) so I never saw that as a luxury product and never had to acquire maple syrup at market price.

But I understand your point, if you grew on the fake stuff and considering how expensive maple syrup is, you have nothing to gain by training yourself to prefer the real stuff.

[lo_zamoyski]

This is where I would note that tastes can be deformed. It is possible, for various reasons, to acquire bad tastes (here, childhood nostalgia).

[mrguyorama]

>deformed

Jeesus. Very silly elitism here.

There's no such thing as an obvious "Perfect" taste. Everyone has different taste preferences. Some people legitimately prefer and like the thing you consider "lesser" for reasons like they literally experience it differently than you do and that experience is not as good for them.

People have dramatic differences in their tastes. Some people are far more sensitive to sour flavors. Some people have way less tolerance for bitter. Your diet will radically change how salty something tastes. Same for sweetness. Same for spicy.

I grew up eating homemade maple products from my Uncle's trees he tapped and cooked himself. I've had the real deal.

It's just not that good for most uses of "Sugar syrup" to me. A molasses cookie is tastier than a maple cookie to me. Maple syrup on a pancake will pollute the pleasant flavor of a literal cake I am eating for breakfast with all sorts of complicated tree resin compounds. I prefer a simple light caramel flavor in my sugar syrup to go on top of my cake that I am eating for breakfast. I want to taste the light and subtle flavors of butter and sweetness and a simple cake. I don't want the complexity of a good maple syrup.

Now when I make my ham, that's when I use a maple glaze. That's exactly when all the complexity shines, against the powerful savory ham flavor.

[SauntSolaire]

> There's no such thing as an obvious "Perfect" taste.

The person you're responding to never claimed there's such a thing as "Perfect taste"; they've only said there's such a thing as "bad taste" (which I would agree with)

[bethekidyouwant]

I refuse to believe this is true.

t.Quebec

[sciencejerk]

I grew up with fake Maple Syrup (high fructose corn syrup), so when I first tried REAL maple syrup as an adult, I preferred the fake, thick corn product over the genuine watery, ultra sweet tree product.

[hammock]

At a restaurant it’s hard because people use way too much and it’s expensive stuff. A solution could be tiny packaged packets of it, the way they do with butter (in part for much the same reason)

[bobbylarrybobby]

I was very dismayed to find that the single serve maple syrup packets that I thought existed are instead just more corn syrup, which cost 21¢ per 1.4oz packet, or 15¢/oz. Meanwhile a jug of maple syrup is 56¢/oz and single serve packets seem to be a bit more than a dollar per ounce.

[BiteCode_dev]

A Canadian friend brought me back 2 bottles of local maple syrup as a gift. Ok, I'm a pretentious Frenchman when it comes to food and I do think most North Americans have no idea how real food tastes.

But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing.

Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.

[subscribed]

I think it's worse than that. It promotes race to the bottom.

I love strawberries, blueberries (bilberry variety) and tomatoes, but apart of the few times in the year when I can collect my own or visit a PYO farm I'm not eating them at all.

Every shop (small and huge alike) only sells the fake, hyper-accelerated garbage (sorry Spain and Morocco, but that stuff is just gross), or - in season - locally grown similarly tasteless but raised on BPA, PFAS, dioxins, flame retardants, etc[1]

I can't even buy the quality stuff. It's just not being sold, because people only buy and eat trash :(

[1] not exaggeration - fuck British farmers knowingly pouring poison on their fields and the corrupt UK governments[2] for openly permitting it, may they get impacted by it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/uk-farml...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e5y85p488o

[short_sells_poo]

Living in London, I notice the same. Getting access to true quality produce is not even a question of money now, it's basically just impossible to get full stop. There are a few local shops in the more upmarket areas that survive on the fact that people are willing to pay the 2-3x premium over the prices at Waitrose.

Gone are the days when you could ask the grocer or farmer to give you a peach to taste. People got used to having 24/7/365 access to everything, and supermarkets optimized purely for looks instead of taste and nutrition, because you aren't allowed to taste anything there. The only thing you can go by is the looks. This means looks sell.

I'd hazard a guess the vast majority of brits don't even know what a proper strawberry tastes like, because the only thing they can buy are beautifully polished turds. Everything tastes watery and crap, or conversely just generic "sweet".

I wouldn't even blame farmers. Their life is hard enough. They are operating on razor thin margins in a very uncertain environment. The consumer (against their own interests) demands that they produce beautifully and cheap turds, so that's what they'll produce. And if you try to do the right thing, you simply run out of money because you can't compete with the turds at the supermarket.

I only have empirical evidence for this, but it got much worse since Brexit as well. The variety has gone down a lot, I see shelves routinely empty at supermarkets and they all seem to be focusing on the same ultraprocessed crap.

[subscribed]

I agree, farmers are not responsible for everything, but definitely for pouring the toxic sludge. That's their choice. Conscious, willful. I doubt they'd make a tea on the water leeching from the landfill so why do they think it's okay to use it on the fields? Nasty.

But I agree, most of the blame lies on the corrupt government (can't think of a better reason explaining why they sanction the above practice or why they gleefully ignore supermarkets role in the "cost of living crisis" - part of it being squeezing the farmers in the same way they squeeze the customers).

And i agree it's been much worse since Brexit - the customer has been conditioned to tolerate worse quality and choice for ever higher prices. Continuous approval to neonicotinoids use in our fields is telling as well.

Gross and saddening. I'm telling my kids to get their education and leave the UK. Being EU country citizens they might even study in some cleaner and saner place.

[gyanchawdhary]

You should try Natoora in Notting Hill or Daylesford. I live in Belgravia and am admittedly spoiled for choice .. the Harrods Food Hall has excellent seasonal and harder to find fruits, and Daylesford consistently has some of the best British produce I've come across... the one in Sloane street even has the best organic Alphanso Mangos from India.

As for Brexit, I actually think it's been a net positive.

[short_sells_poo]

You have to be joking, right? So you are saying that it's all fine, because we can just go to Harrods to get quality food?

Nevermind that I hate Harrods and that entire area with a passion. It's a tasteless, glitzy tourist trap.

My post was all about the fact that barring a tiny percentile of people who a) live in an affluent area and b) are willing to pay 2-3x the regular supermarket prices, you cannot get good quality food. And you say "ah it's simples, just go to the most egregiously flashy beacon of division between the rich and poor and you can get good fruit"

Thank you, I can still get good fruit at my local grocer in Wimbledon, because it charges 2-3x over the regular high street prices and there are people around who can pay this. Doesn't help someone living in Croydon and having to go to Tesco, does it now.

[psadauskas]

I visit Maui fairly regularly, and its the same thing with local "Maui Gold" pineapple. It is a completely different fruit from the Dole crap you buy in supermarkets on the mainland. Whenever I'm there I'll eat pineapples until my tongue burns, and when I'm home I don't eat it at all.

[kbrkbr]

But what happens here, let me point that out for completeness, is not a dark conspiracy. At least not on this level.

People go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest thing that does the trick, probably because they can't afford something else. Bills want to be payed.

[subscribed]

Partially agree, in case of Aldi/Asda/Lidl but mostly not.

They don't have a choice, they cannot encounter a good vegetables and fruits in the normal stores. They CANNOT, at least in the UK. It's that simple. Maybe during some events, as a curiosity.

Good quality vegetables are not available on the shelves in general. Maybe in some cases, yeah. Some. But generally not. Similarly with meat, although it's much easier here to find something decent.

The difference in taste and quality between the cheapest and most expensive fresh fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets is virtually none. If you don't believe me, you don't have to, I simply grew plenty of that as a kid and a teenager, I keep growing some, and the difference between the average garden-sourced (or PYO/small farm sourced) and the Aldi/M&S/Waitrose/Tesco is simply too big to describe, you'd have to try it.

So there's an illusion of choice between awful and bad - in that case I'm simply choosing imported (thanks to the landfill and manufacturing waste in our great British food chain). People who don't know, or don't care pick whatever looks the best.

Some buy the cheapest. Not everyone buys the cheapest - you can't seriously claim that in case of the expensive stores (Sainsbury's, M&S, Waitrose).

And then there's palate problem. If someone was raised on these garbage produce, they may even favour it over healthy, proper ones. Proper radish will have a bite to it. Proper tomato has a complex profile (and there's hundreds of varieties of that too), instead of how garden stores describe it being "tasty"....

Consumers have been dumbed down and trained into accepting inferior livestock feed as food, and thanks for that they can for example say with a straight face that they actually like or prefer Tesco white toast bread.

(they've been scammed)

[boscillator]

Huh, I've been to plenty of places were you could order it for an up charge and it came in it's own little bottle.

[tetris11]

the real stuff was arguably improved upon with the thicker replacement. I don't want wet pancakes.

[threetonesun]

As New Englander I feel it's important to note that there are, like olive oil, various grades of maple syrup. They changed the system but Grade B / Dark maple syrup is the best for pancakes and "thickness". If you want to make a sauce or cook with it, golden or amber are fine.

[brookst]

That grade switch was crazy. I spent decades learning grade B is what I wanted, now it’s grade A, and it’s still confusing me.

[threetonesun]

It's made Grade B more widely available though, because now it's just a light or dark choice like brown sugar, whereas before Grade B seemed somehow inferior. Before it was easy to assume Grade-A would be the most maple-y.

[phyzome]

Kind of sounds like you haven't had real maple syrup.

[tetris11]

I have canadian cousins and they send me the real stuff every year. It's just what you prefer.

Some people like a Rolex watch they can flash at parties. Others are happy with a cheap imitation with a nice form that they can wear daily

[phyzome]

Hmm, weird. I've not found real maple syrup to be too runny. (But then, I haven't had the fake stuff in decades... maybe they add a bunch of thickener to it.)

[api]

When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class and nostalgia for the stories classic aristocracy told about itself.

I’m American and grew up inundated with cultural disdain for the suburbs, tract housing, malls, all those things, and at some point I asked, well, what then? What’s better?

Sauce made slowly by hand is better. Carefully curated culture is better. Hand made, artisan, intentional.

Rare. Special. And if it’s rare and special few can have it, making it also expensive and aristocratic.

As soon as you try to give everyone that experience, you get chain stories. You get tract homes. You get mass culture. Because it’s a mass. It’s million, billions of people, and we are not as unique as we think we are. None of us are.

I’m not saying the whole critique is this. There’s another side to it that’s about exploitation and addiction and that one rings true to me. But I find that it’s hard to peel the two things apart.

It’s not exploitation to raise the standard of living of masses of people, and if you think it’s inherently tacky maybe you’re a neo-feudalist reactionary and don’t know it yet. There’s a reason that stuff took hold so easily among certain kinds of hipsters.

I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned.

[plastic-enjoyer]

I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product.

But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstracts anything else away. Take, for example, meat or vegetable stock, which is now a staple in every kitchen in the form of powder or stock cubes. If you take a look at the ingredients and nutritional values, they’re rather disappointing. The masses may get access to the taste, but not to the nutrients.

[api]

I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas.

The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version?

In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more.

The artificial mass market imitation is cheaper because it is thermodynamically cheaper. It takes far less labor (the most costly input to almost all processes) and it substitutes things that can be bulk produced at a lower unit cost. Being less nutritious probably directly correlates since nutrition is chemical complexity is lower entropy, higher energy, harder to scale.

There’s a lot of rare “authentic” experiences that cannot be scaled. That means most people can’t have them, ever.

You can’t have both rarity / exclusivity and democratization / equality. One side has to give.

[pluralmonad]

This is exactly what the article touches on, the race to the bottom. It drags everyone's experience down. This appeal to scalability is part of the problem, IMO. Not every experience is or should be scalable. Some kids find blackberry bushes at grandma's instead of strawberries. Little is gained by strip mining human experience so the thinnest veneer can be "scaled".

[brookst]

But what do you do about free will? If billions of people want maple syrup, do you say “no, no, we can’t scale the real thing and corn syrup is a poor substitute, so you can’t have even a simulacrum of the experience”?

[api]

That means most people can never have it, which is why romanticism ends up pining for aristocracy.

[eszed]

I take your point, but the other argument against scaling in this way doesn't rely on sentiment: it's unsustainable. I actually hate that word, but the point is that current production methods create (unpriced) environmental externalities. We're draining aquifers, exhausting topsoil, pouring fertilizer into rivers, using too much petroleum - and then throwing a massive portion of what we produce away. (And that's just for food; similar arguments exist for fashion, and sometimes for buildings and infrastructure.) That argument gets effectively zero traction - despite, I think, being the better one - so some people who care more about that argue from sentiment instead, which (for the reasons you explain, and rightly object to) has better legs with the general public.

[recursive-call]

okay but most kids don’t find any kind of bushes. do they just not get to eat fruit?

[wolvesechoes]

> I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned.

It shouldn't be surprising - people conflated leftism with liberal progressivism, but they are not synonymous.

[diydsp]

>French cultural pessimism

Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious.

His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.

[wincy]

This is like how 95% of SUVs are basically just minivans with a slightly different body. You have to research to find one with a truck engine that can say, haul a travel trailer. Another one that comes to mind is shutters on windows. People like the look but they’re just planks of wood in the vast majority of cases now.

[triceratops]

> People like the look [of shutters] but they’re just planks of wood in the vast majority of cases now.

I'm confused, what are real window shutters then?

Or do you mean the kind that are attached to the wall and don't actually close?

[wincy]

Most shutters are non functional vestigial architecture. People like the look, even though it has no non aesthetic purpose at this point. At least in the USA the vast majority of “shutters” are this way.

If you go to say, the Florida keys, you’ll obviously see real shutters, since they get hurricanes. Probably doesn’t need to be reiterated, but those shutters are fold out during the nice season (which is the “look” you see on a modern colonial style home) but if a storm is coming you you fold them in and latch them shut to protect your glass windows. I’d imagine part of it is also modern windows are more shatter resistant than older windows, so a much larger storm is required to blow out your windows without the shutters.

Canopy beds are similar (although canopy beds aren’t in style anymore). They served as a way to allow a king privacy in a large hall where courtiers and the court all slept in the same room (a bedroom being prohibitively expensive in medieval times) and to keep heat in before modern heating. Most canopy beds are just kind of nice looking but don’t serve to hold heat in to your sleeping area. We have walls and central heating so they’re largely anachronistic.

[numbsafari]

.. and here I am wanting better minivan options that can pull a travel trailer.

[doubled112]

And here I am just wanting station wagons to come back, and be reasonably priced.

The towing numbers are always higher in Europe than US too, despite being the same cars (as far as I know).

[rootusrootus]

> The towing numbers are always higher in Europe than US too, despite being the same cars (as far as I know).

Mostly due to differences in environment, AFAIK. Americans drive faster, and towing instability seems to increase with the square of the speed. Also, most travel trailers in the US wouldn't be car-towable anyway, because we have expectations on amenities and size that are predicated on using at least a half-ton pickup for the tow vehicle. Trailers with the compromises needed to be towed European-style aren't popular, so it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

[wolvesechoes]

> Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious.

> His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.

Not really, Baudrillard is far more nuanced than "it's all fake", doesn't say much about "quality" (actually, hyperreal is "more real than real", and simulation is better than thing being simulated - that's why it is so pervasive), and he takes much more from Debord than Plato.

I apologize, but your comment seems to me based on YT video essays or LLM summaries, not on Baudrillard's writing.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

I was fully triggered by the hollandiase bit. This is something I look for constantly when I travel for real eggs Benny. It's never real, even at higher end hotels. They just use better quality fake stuff. And it's so good when it's real.

[wincy]

My wife makes real Eggs Benedict for me once a year on my birthday. I went to a resort hotel and spit out their Eggs Benedict it tasted so bad compared to what I get at home. They comped my meal. I guess this explains why I’m constantly confused why Eggs Benedict doesn’t taste right. I’ve found one, maybe two restaurants with passable Eggs Benedict in my city.

[virtualritz]

Same with truffle mayo or truffle-based products. [1]

People who grew up on the artificial flavor prefer it over the real one. I have quite a few in my circle of friends.

You go to an Italian restaurant and you get plain pasta, panned in butter or olive oil and then someone comes with a real truffle and grates it in front you of over your dish until you tell them to stop. You pay for that amount.

Unless you go to a restaurant with a great reputation or some Michelin star venue, that is the only way to be sure you're eating real truffles. The dish has no truffle-aroma itself and the truffle is grated while you watch.

Assuming ofc (and probably true for most people): your palate is not well acquainted to the taste of the real thing enough to tell it apart from the many fakes/substitutes.

[1] https://www.tasteatlas.com/truffle-industry-is-a-big-scam

[ahartmetz]

If the real thing doesn't taste like gasoline, I'd probably prefer the real thing. I find fake truffle disgustingly gasoline- or solvent-like.

[vctrnk]

Never thought of the fake variant as gasoline-like but it sure has that strange, very heavy 'chemical' aftertaste that lingers in your palate. Also never tried the real thing, I wonder if i'd like it or not.

[hilariously]

+1 - it tastes so obviously of petrochemicals that I throw the food out - truffle fries, truffle pasta - might as well pour mineral spirits on it for the same experience.

[everforward]

It doesn’t. I also think the fake truffle tastes weirdly like gasoline, the real ones don’t at all.

They are dramatically more expensive, though. Last time I had it, I think I paid a $50 upcharge to have it added to my pasta. Might have been more, it’s been a couple years.

[Xmd5a]

> The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh.

No it's not.

[bregma]

It's not at all difficult if you have gained the basic survival skill of cooking. I mean, take a couple egg yolks in a double boiler, add the juice of a lemon, whisk until it's thick then add butter. 10 minutes and you can use a bowl over the pot of boiling water you're poaching your eggs in if you don't have a double boiler for your camp stove in the wilderness.

But that's still more of a hassle than putting the carton of that yellow plastic liquid in the microwave for a minute and a half. People will prefer their slops and the farmer brings it right to you; what could possibly be a better life?

[ajmurmann]

And that's ten minutes every time someone orders a dish with hollandaise because it really breaks when reheating as well. Given how much cost of labor is a factor it's easy to see why hardly any restaurant will serve real hollandaise. Perfect Baumol cost disease example. Maybe something like a Thermomix could solve the economic problem of hollandaise.

[lstodd]

I short-circuited my microwave accidentally two years ago (don't power it up and then drop screwdrivers) and that was the best thing to happen to my meals.

[picofarad]

Two microwaves tried to burn my house down so I said, fine, universe, I hear you.

I don't even have an oven anymore; three induction hobs, air fryer (instant pot with the fry lid), rice cooker, bread machine.

I have really bad luck with kitchen appliances these last 10 years!

[BonerWiener]

Nothing kills a discussion like when someone just saying "I disagree" with zero explanation. They're not really contributing just cluttering up the comments. At least give a reason why.

[devilbunny]

(Not the person you're replying to.)

The original sauce is, in fact, a pain to make. However, it's not the 17th century any more. You can, with an immersion blender (which is not a particularly obscure piece of kitchen hardware), make it very easily. There's a bit of a knack, but only a bit of one, and if the sauce breaks you can just restart the emulsion with a new egg.

https://www.seriouseats.com/foolproof-2-minute-hollandaise-r...

The same basic technique can be used for mayonnaise and is even harder to screw up.

[corroclaro]

For the record: you basically take a stick blender, the container that came with it, crack an egg, pour over some lemon juice, then blend while pouring in hot butter (use the microwave!). Takes ca 2 minutes, including the 1 minute 30s of microwaving the butter.

Instant _real_ sauce hollandaise as the stick blender creates a vortex that emulsifies it. No need to hand whisk it over a bain-marie at careful temperatures.

[LearnYouALisp]

Has anyone tried ultrasound (either probe or basin) for this mixing? I know it can be done for a finer substance

[devilbunny]

Why? A cheap probe ultrasonic mixer is $500 on Amazon, small, and would take forever. An immersion blender is $17 at Walmart and does it in seconds for a half-liter of mayo or hollandaise. If you need more than 500 mL of mayo but can’t just do a few batches, you are no longer in the realm of cooking at home.

If you want to do molecular gastronomy stuff, have fun, but it isn’t ever going to be a mass-market thing.

[maxerickson]

The other post is also just an assertion.

Can you link to evidence that countering assertions with assertions kills discussions? (This is sarcasm)

[Xmd5a]

Cant / currently cooking creme diplomate.

[plastic-enjoyer]

You are forgiven

[Xmd5a]

Thank you father

https://imgur.com/a/CKE0V37

https://anonpaste.pw/v/db571281-c2b0-489e-b121-29959add1947#...

    ## Final Structure
    
    **Sweet pastry**
    → **Almond cream**
    → **Homemade jostaberry jam**
    → **Small raspberries**
    → **Vanilla cream**
    → **Chantilly-lightened vanilla cream**
    → **Large fresh raspberries**
    → **Icing sugar**

That's a 2.5kg raspberry pie. About 120€ in a bakery.

[westmeal]

I don't know the real sauce is incredible compared to the fake stuff. It really is a massive hassle though :/

[eszed]

Try this:

https://www.seriouseats.com/foolproof-2-minute-hollandaise-r...

I used to make it on the stovetop - even learned how to rescue it when it broke - but I don't anymore. You can decide whether using a hand blender counts as "real" or not, but the ingredients are the same, and I can't tell the difference, only the technique is arguably "cheating".

[gacgacgac]

I make eggs benedict probably once a month or two. It's really fairly simple with an immersion blender. Comes together in like a minute. Timing the poached eggs and the sandwich elements is a little tricky, but not materially more difficult than, eg, cinnamon rolls from scratch.

[devilbunny]

If you’re making for family, poach the eggs in the shell with an immersion circulator as used for sous vide. The whites will not be quite as perfect, but the taste and texture are there, and you can store the cooked eggs (I forget the temp I used, but look around, there are examples) and the prepared hollandaise in a Ziploc at 130 F/55 C for quite a while.

[gacgacgac]

I strain off the loose white and poach, poached eggs can be made in advance and rewarmed too, but I prefer to do them while the sauce is coming together.

[plastic-enjoyer]

I know! But a lot of people prefer the fake stuff, because they were raised on it or harbor nostalgic feelings for it. For them, it's the real deal.