Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Poached Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Poach the eggs
Fill a wide, shallow pan with boiling water and add salt.
Break each egg into a saucer and gently slide them into the water.
Let the eggs simmer for 2 minutes.
Boil the eggs for 1 minute to detach them from the pan.
Remove the eggs with a pancake turner.
Serve
Place the eggs on hot toast or minced meat or fish.
Add 3 drops of Worcestershire sauce on each egg just before serving.
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 + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,934 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,895 recipes
Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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 whites set in hot water, holding the shape of the poached egg while the yolk stays soft.
The step that matters
Slide the eggs into the water gently. Egg white proteins begin to set on contact with hot water and hold the egg together. Dropping or splashing the egg breaks the white apart, so lowering it from a saucer keeps it compact.
“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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