Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Poached Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Bring the water to a boil in a pot.
Add salt and lemon juice to the boiling water.
Poach
Carefully place the eggs in their shells into the boiling water for about 15 seconds.
Remove the eggs and break each one into a saucer, keeping it low to avoid breaking the yolk.
Gently slip the egg from the saucer into the boiling water.
Simmer slowly until the egg white is set.
Lift the egg out with a slotted spoon and let it rest on a towel for a few seconds to absorb excess water.
Serve
Serve the poached eggs on buttered toast or with bacon or ham.
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 + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 with gentle heat, forming the firm white around the soft yolk.
- Lemon juice
- Its acidity helps the egg white coagulate faster and hold its shape in the water.
The step that matters
Slip the egg gently into the water. Egg whites are fragile before they set. Lowering the egg from a saucer with a gentle motion and keeping the water at a slow simmer helps the white wrap around the yolk instead of scattering or breaking 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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