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 ↓
Boiled Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and poach
Boil water with a splash of vinegar.
Carefully break the egg, keeping it intact in the shell.
Turn the egg into the boiling water and poach for about 2 minutes.
Serve
Serve the poached egg hot on a slice of toasted bread.
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).
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Vinegar + breadtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,672 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,922 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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
- Egg
- Egg whites set when heated, giving the poached egg its firm shape.
The step that matters
Lowering the egg into the water. The white's proteins set as they heat, so an egg kept intact and slipped gently into the water holds its shape. If it is broken or dropped in roughly, the white spreads out and cooks into loose strands.
“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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