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Dropped Eggs

Poached eggs are eggs gently cooked in boiling water, served with optional parsley garnish or buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Dropped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Bring a pan of water to a boil.

  2. Carefully break the eggs close to the water and drop them in slowly to avoid breaking the yolks.

  3. Using a large spoon, ladle boiling water over the yolks until the whites form a skim.

  4. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and serve on a dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with parsley or serve on buttered toast if desired.

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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 in hot water, forming the poached body of the dish.
Butter toast
Adds richness and a crisp, soft contrast under the eggs.

The step that matters

Dropping the eggs into the water. Breaking the eggs close to the water and lowering them slowly keeps the yolks intact. Dropping them from height or too fast can rupture the yolk and spread the white unevenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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