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Eggs Poached

Poached eggs served on toast, seasoned with pepper and salt, and finished with hot butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Eggs Poached

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a dish, ensuring the yolks remain unbroken.

  2. Bring a deep pot of water to a boil.

Poach

  1. Carefully drop the eggs into the boiling water; they will cook quickly.

  2. Prepare toast while the eggs are cooking.

Serve

  1. Use a slotted spoon to remove the eggs and place them on the toast.

  2. Season with a little pepper and salt.

  3. Melt some butter until very hot and pour it over the eggs and toast.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, firming the whites while the yolk stays soft.
Toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the eggs and soaks up the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and its heat gives a warm, savoury coating over the eggs.

The step that matters

Lowering the eggs into the water. Egg whites begin setting within seconds of touching hot water. Entering the pot gently keeps the yolk intact and stops the white from spreading and tearing apart.

“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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