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Poached Eggs with Spinach

A simple dish of poached eggs served on buttered toast topped with prepared spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Poached Eggs with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare rounds of toast and butter them.

  2. Place 1 tablespoon of prepared spinach on each slice of toast.

Assemble and serve

  1. Poach the eggs and place one on top of each spinach-covered toast.

  2. Add a small pinch of black pepper to the center of each egg yolk.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Poached eggs form the rich, creamy centre that tops each piece of toast.
Prepared spinach
Adds a soft, moist, vegetable layer that sits between the toast and the egg.
Bread
Toasted slices give a crisp base that holds the spinach and egg.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the toast and helps it taste rich.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs. Eggs poached at a gentle simmer keep their whites compact and yolks runny. Boiling vigorously can scatter the whites and break the egg apart, so the egg may not hold its shape on the toast.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, pepper. 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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