Skip to main content
Main

Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on toasted bread, optionally with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil water in a kettle.

  2. Pass enough boiling water through a clean cloth to fill a stew-pan halfway.

  3. Break the egg into a cup.

Poach

  1. Remove the stew-pan from the stove.

  2. Gently slip the egg into the stew-pan.

  3. Let it stand until the white is set.

  4. Return the pan to a moderate fire.

  5. When the water boils, the egg is ready.

Serve

  1. Lift the egg with a slotted spoon.

  2. Trim the ragged edges of the white.

  3. Serve on the toasted bread with or without butter.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. 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

Egg
The white's proteins set in the hot water, forming a firm, tender shell around the yolk.

The step that matters

Gently slip the egg into the stew-pan. Egg white proteins set with gentle heat. Water at a rolling boil tears the white apart, so keeping the water just below a boil helps the egg hold together.

“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.

More poached eggs recipes

on Toast 48with Mushrooms 11in Milk 9with Celery Sauce 8with Cream 7with Ham 7 See all 276 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes