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Poached Eggs with Sorrel or Endive

A dish of poached eggs served on toasted bread with a sauce of simmered sorrel, butter, cayenne pepper, and ham essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 with Sorrel or Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Cut a slice of bread from a loaf and shape it to fit the inside of a dish, covering three parts.

  2. Fry the bread in boiling lard until light golden.

  3. Drain the fried bread and keep warm.

Make the sorrel sauce

  1. Wash the sorrel and chop it, then squeeze the chopped sorrel to remove excess moisture.

  2. Combine the sorrel, butter, cayenne pepper, and essence of ham in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer the mixture until cooked.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour and water.

  5. Boil the thickened mixture for five minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter the toast.

  2. Poach the eggs.

  3. Drain the poached eggs.

  4. Place the poached eggs on the bread.

  5. Pour the sorrel sauce around the eggs.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main protein, setting into a soft, tender body when poached.
Sorrel (in the method)
Supplies a sharp, lemony acidity and green flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in liquid as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Bread
Forms a crisp, golden base that holds the eggs.

The step that matters

Squeeze the chopped sorrel. Removing excess moisture keeps the sauce thick rather than watery, so it clings to the eggs and toast instead of running off.

“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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