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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on buttered toast with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Crack each egg into a small bowl, then gently slide it into the boiling water.

  3. Cook until the egg whites are set.

  4. Carefully remove the eggs with a spoon and place them on buttered toast.

Finish and serve

  1. Top each egg with a small piece of butter and a dash of pepper.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Set whites form the main body of the dish, while the yolk stays soft and runny.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the flavor of the egg and toast.
Toast
Provides a crisp, sturdy base that holds the poached egg.

The step that matters

Cook until the egg whites are set. Eggs cooked in water that is not kept at a gentle simmer can break apart or turn rubbery. Lowering the egg into barely moving water and stopping once the whites firm keeps the yolk runny and the white tender.

“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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