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Poached Eggs— Andalusian

Poached eggs served with a thick tomato and brown sauce, garnished with pickled beet shapes and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Poached Eggs— Andalusian

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew down strained tomatoes with finely minced onion until thick.

  2. Mix the thick tomato puree with an equal quantity of brown sauce and add pepper sauce to taste.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs until cooked to your liking.

  2. Place a spoonful of the thick sauce in a flat dish, add a poached egg in the center.

  3. Garnish with shapes cut from pickled beets and capers.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Strained tomatoes
Cook down to form the thick base of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds savory depth and body to the tomato puree.
Eggs
Provide the soft, runny poached centerpiece once cooked.
Finely minced onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor to the tomato base as it stews.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomato and onion until thick. Tomatoes contain a lot of water, so they must reduce fully to a thick puree; otherwise the sauce will be thin and run around the poached egg.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sauce, pepper, vinegar, capers, 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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