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Eggs, Poached, with Madeira Sauce

Poached eggs served on fried bacon slices, garnished with small forcemeat balls and topped with Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 39% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,895 recipes. The science ↓

Eggs, Poached, with Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Poach the required number of eggs and trim them neatly.

  2. Lay the eggs on slices of fried bacon.

  3. Garnish with small forcemeat balls.

  4. Pour ½ cup of Madeira sauce over the eggs.

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. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Eggs
Poached eggs form the main body of the dish, providing protein structure that sets when cooked.
Madeira sauce
Adds rich, slightly sweet flavour and moisture that coats the eggs and bacon.
Fried bacon
Provides salty, savoury flavour and a crisp-edged fat base under the eggs.
Forcemeat balls
Add a richer, meaty texture as a garnish alongside the eggs.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs. Eggs must be cooked gently in simmering water so the whites set around the yolks; boiling vigorously can break the whites apart and leave the eggs ragged, which is why neat trimming matters after poaching.

“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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