Skip to main content
Main

Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on buttered toast, garnished with parsley, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally finished with hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Bring water to a gentle boil in a pan.

  2. Carefully pour the egg into the water.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes, until the white is just set.

  4. Lift the egg out with a slotted spoon and drain briefly.

Serve

  1. Place the egg on a piece of buttered toast.

  2. Trim the edges of the egg with a thin-edged glass if desired.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

  4. If avoiding butter, moisten the top with a little hot milk.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Parsley + milktop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,011 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Its proteins set with gentle heat, forming the firm white around the soft yolk.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle boil, not a rolling boil. A vigorous boil tears the delicate white apart before it sets. Gentle heat lets the proteins coagulate evenly around the yolk, giving a neat, intact egg.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, milk. 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.

More poached eggs recipes

on Toast 48with Mushrooms 11in Milk 9with Celery Sauce 8with Cream 7with Ham 7 See all 276 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes