Skip to main content
Main

Poached Eggs, Portuguese Style

A tomato-based dish with stuffed tomatoes, toasted bread, and poached eggs, seasoned with butter, shallots, breadcrumbs, parsley, tarragon, and beef marrow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Poached Eggs, Portuguese Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove some pulp.

  3. In a pan, fry the shallots in butter until soft.

  4. Add breadcrumbs, parsley, tarragon, beef marrow, egg yolk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Mix well.

  5. Stuff the tomatoes with the mixture.

Bake and toast

  1. Place the stuffed tomatoes in a buttered sauté pan.

  2. Bake the stuffed tomatoes in the oven until browned.

  3. Toast the bread.

Poach and serve

  1. Place each stuffed tomato on a slice.

  2. Poach the eggs.

  3. Place one poached egg on top of each tomato.

  4. Garnish with parsley.

  5. Serve.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hollowed halves form the edible vessel that holds the filling and softens as it bakes.
Eggs
Poached eggs set on top to give a rich, runny yolk contrast to the tomato.
Butter
Enriches the shallots and coats the pan, adding fat, flavour and browning.
Shallots
Softened in butter, they add a mild, sweet aromatic base to the filling.
White breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the filling so it holds its shape in the tomatoes.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling as it heats, helping it hold together.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs. Eggs must be cooked gently in simmering water so the whites set around the yolk. Too vigorous a boil breaks the whites apart, and overcooking firms the yolk.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, parsley, tarragon, beef, egg, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, parsley, tarragon, beef, egg, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes