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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on toast, seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Fill a deep skillet nearly full of boiling salted water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to the water.

  3. Break each egg into the water where it bubbles.

  4. Gently dip the water over the eggs with a spoon.

  5. When the egg whites are firm, lift them out with a skimmer.

Serve

  1. Drain the eggs and place them on round pieces of toast.

  2. Season with bits of butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites set around the yolk as they cook, giving the poached egg its shape.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Acidity helps the egg white coagulate faster, so it holds together in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour over the warm egg and toast.

The step that matters

Gently dip the water over the eggs with a spoon.. Swirling the water gathers the loose white around the yolk. Without it, the white spreads into thin wisps instead of a compact shape.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, 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.

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