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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs are cooked gently in simmering salted water and served on buttered toast with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Break each egg into a saucer, one at a time.

  2. Fill a saucepan with water.

  3. Add a generous amount of salt.

  4. Heat until simmering.

Poach

  1. Gently drop each egg into the simmering water. Cook one at a time if the saucepan is small.

  2. Keep the water just below boiling.

  3. Use a small spoon. Splash water over the egg to help whiten it.

  4. Cook until the white is set but the yolk is still visible.

  5. Remove the egg with a slotted spoon.

Serve

  1. Trim the edges.

  2. Place it on a small piece of buttered toast.

  3. Repeat for all eggs.

  4. Add a bit of butter on top of each. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

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
The main ingredient; the white sets around the yolk while the yolk stays soft.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, savoury flavour on the toast and over the eggs.
Toast
Gives a crisp, absorbent base that holds the egg and soaks up the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until the white is set but the yolk is still visible. Eggs keep cooking after they leave the water, and the white's proteins set at moderate heat. Pulling the egg too late makes the yolk firm, while pulling it too early leaves the white runny and unset.

“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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