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Sardines with Poached Eggs

A dish of fried bread topped with poached eggs and a seasoned yolk mixture, garnished with sardines.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sardines with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into even-sized oval shapes.

  2. Beat the egg with milk.

  3. Dip the bread slices in the egg mixture.

  4. Fry the bread slices in butter until golden brown.

Make the yolk mixture

  1. Chop the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Place the chopped yolks in a saucepan with butter.

  3. Add parsley, beetroot, tarragon, lemon juice, mustard, and capers to the saucepan.

  4. Stir the mixture over low heat for a few minutes.

  5. Thicken the mixture with breadcrumbs.

Assemble and serve

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Mask the poached eggs with the yolk mixture.

  3. Arrange the poached eggs in the center of the dish and garnish with sardine fillets.

  4. Spread half of the fried bread rounds with the yolk mixture.

  5. Spread the other half of the fried bread rounds with sardine paste.

  6. Arrange the bread around the dish, overlapping them to form a border.

  7. Season the dish with cayenne pepper.

  8. Place the dish in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for a few minutes to heat through.

  9. 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

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Beetroot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg and milk coating helps the bread brown and crisp when fried.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks with butter form a rich, thick mask for the poached eggs.
Breadcrumbs
Starch in the breadcrumbs thickens the yolk mixture as it heats.
Sardine paste
Adds a salty, savoury fish flavour to the bread spread.
Lemon juice
Acidity brightens the rich yolk mixture and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs absorb liquid and swell as they heat, so the mask thickens. Adding too many or stirring unevenly leaves it stiff or lumpy, while too little leaves it runny and unable to coat the eggs.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, butter, parsley, tarragon, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter, parsley, tarragon, lemon. 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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