Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Poach Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Bring a broad stew-pan of water to a boil.
Break the eggs into teacups.
Cook and serve
Gently place the eggs into the boiling water.
Cook for 2 to 2.5 minutes.
Serve on toasted bread or spinach, or with any approved accompaniment.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set into a delicate, tender shape in the hot water as the whites coagulate around the yolk.
The step that matters
Gently place the eggs into the boiling water. Dropping eggs in too roughly tears the whites apart, while a gentle lowering keeps the egg together. Timing matters too, since the proteins keep setting and the yolk firms the longer it cooks.
“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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