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Poached Eggs with Cream

Poached eggs served with a boiled cream sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Poached Eggs with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Combine water, vinegar, and salt in a frying pan; bring to a boil.

  2. Crack each egg into a separate cup and gently slip them into the boiling water.

  3. Simmer the eggs for 3 to 4 minutes, then lift them out onto a hot dish.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Empty the pan, add cream, and season with salt, pepper, and pounded sugar; bring to a boil.

  2. Add butter in small pieces, swirling the pan until melted, then pour over the eggs and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 their proteins in the hot water, forming the tender poached body of the dish.
Vinegar
Helps the egg whites coagulate quickly, keeping them compact in the water.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky, glossy finish to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Slipping the eggs into the boiling water. Eggs dropped into water that is not at a steady boil, or dropped in roughly, spread out and lose their shape. Cracking each egg into a cup first and sliding it in gently keeps the whites gathered around the yolk.

“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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