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Eggs “en Matelote.”

Eggs en Matelote is a French dish of poached eggs in a wine and stock sauce with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Eggs “en Matelote.”

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine red wine, stock, herbs, onion, garlic, spices, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce.

Poach and assemble

  1. Poach the eggs one at a time.

  2. Place each poached egg on a fried sippet.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

  2. Add butter and thicken with flour.

  3. Cook until the flour is done.

  4. Serve the sauce over the eggs.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main dish, with their proteins setting when poached in hot liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that carries the sauce's flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the finished sauce.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma as it simmers in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the flour is done. Flour must be heated long enough for its starch to swell fully and for its raw, pasty taste to cook off. Stopping early leaves the sauce tasting floury and possibly lumpy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, onion, garlic, pepper, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, onion, garlic, pepper, egg, butter, flour. 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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