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Eggs in Tomato Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with eggs poached in it, garnished with olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Eggs in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Pass the cooked tomatoes through a colander to remove seeds.

  2. Blister the chilis on all sides over heat, then wrap in a cloth to peel easily.

  3. Remove seeds from the chilis, shred them, and add to the tomatoes.

  4. In a saucepan, heat the hot fat and fry the onion and garlic until light brown.

  5. Remove the onion and garlic, then add the tomato mixture and cook for 10 minutes.

Cook the eggs

  1. Break in the eggs one at a time, and season with salt.

  2. Add thyme and parsley for flavor if desired.

  3. Cover and cook slowly on the back of the stove for 20 minutes.

  4. Garnish with olives before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set in the simmering sauce, becoming the main body of the dish.
Cooked tomatoes
Form the sauce base, providing moisture, acidity and body.
Dark green chilis
Add pungent heat and fresh flavor to the tomato sauce.
Hot fat
Carries flavor from the onion and garlic and enriches the sauce.
Onion
Frying until light brown adds savory sweetness to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cook the eggs slowly, covered, on the back of the stove. Eggs set through gentle heat; a hard boil makes the whites tough and rubbery and can break the yolks. Covering traps steam so the tops set evenly.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, garlic, egg, thyme, parsley, olive):

  1. Oreganofits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, garlic, egg, thyme, parsley, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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