Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Poached Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Break an egg into a cup.
Put the egg into boiling water.
Cook until the white is set, about 2 minutes.
Remove with an egg slice and place on toast and butter or spinach.
Serve hot.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set protein forms the tender, cohesive poached body of the dish.
The step that matters
Cook until the white is set. Egg white begins to set at about 60°C and firms as it heats, so pulling the egg too early leaves it runny and fragile, while overcooking makes the yolk rubbery and the white tough.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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