Poached Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Fill a shallow pan with boiling water and add a little coarse sea salt.
Break each egg into a saucer and gently slip it into the water.
Reduce heat so the water simmers.
When the whites are firm, lift each egg out, trim, and place on buttered toast.
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
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Their proteins set when heated, forming the poached egg's firm white around a runny yolk.
The step that matters
Reduce heat so the water simmers. Boiling water agitates the egg white and tears it apart, while gentle simmering lets the proteins set in a compact shape. Keeping the water below a rolling boil gives a neater, more cohesive poached egg.
“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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