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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on buttered toast, cooked in salted boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Fill a shallow pan with about 2 inches of boiling water and add 2 teaspoons of salt for each quart of water.

  2. Reduce the heat to stop the boiling.

  3. Break the eggs one at a time into a saucer and slip them carefully into the hot water.

  4. Cover the pan and cook until the egg whites are firm.

Serve

  1. Remove the eggs carefully with a skimmer and place them on pieces of hot buttered toast.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The egg whites set into a firm shell around the soft yolk when heated in water.

The step that matters

Slip the eggs gently into the water. Egg white proteins set when heated, but in vigorously boiling water the whites scatter and tear. Lowering the heat and sliding each egg in carefully keeps the white gathered around the yolk as it firms.

“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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