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Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Poached eggs served with a cream sauce made from cream or milk, butter, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. In a frying pan, combine hot water, vinegar, and salt.

  2. Break each egg into a saucer and carefully slip it into the hot water.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the white is set, then lift out with a skimmer.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In the same pan, empty the water and add cream or milk and butter if using milk.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then thicken with cornstarch.

  3. Bring to a boil and pour over the poached eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve on toast or without.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the protein that sets into the soft, poached centre of the dish.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream sauce by swelling with heat as it boils.
Vinegar
Acid helps the egg white coagulate quickly, keeping the egg compact in the water.

The step that matters

Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the white is set. Eggs cook from the outside in, so underdone whites spread and stay runny, while overcooking toughens the yolk and proteins. Watching the white closely gives a neat, tender egg.

“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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