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Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce

Poached eggs simmered in tomato sauce, served hot over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Bring the tomato sauce to a boil and skim if necessary.

  2. Carefully break in the eggs.

  3. Cook until the whites are set, basting with the sauce.

Serve

  1. Lift out the eggs with a skimmer and place them on slices of toast.

  2. Pour the sauce over the eggs and serve hot.

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. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg 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

Tomato sauce
Provides the poaching liquid and flavour, and its heat cooks the eggs from outside in.
Eggs
Set into soft, tender whites and a runny yolk when gently poached in the hot sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the whites are set, basting with the sauce. Egg whites begin to set at moderate heat and turn firm as proteins coagulate. Basting spoons sauce over the top so the white sets evenly while the yolk stays soft. Pulling the eggs too early leaves the whites runny; cooking too long toughens the yolks.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, egg):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg. 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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