Why it works: Egg and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Poached Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the water
Add salt and vinegar to the water.
Poach the egg
Break the egg into a cup.
Gently slip the egg into a pan of hot water.
Cook for 2.5 minutes under boiling point.
Serve
Remove the egg, drain, and serve on hot buttered toast.
Garnish with parsley.
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 + vinegartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,922 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
- Egg
- Its proteins set when heated, forming the soft white around a runny yolk.
- Vinegar
- Its acidity helps the egg white set faster and hold its shape in water.
The step that matters
Slip the egg into water kept under boiling point. Egg white begins to set around the yolk as it heats. In gently hot water it sets evenly and keeps its shape. A rolling boil or rough handling tears the white apart and scatters it through the pan.
“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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