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Eggs “ En Matelote.”

Eggs en Matelote is a poached egg dish served in a wine and stock sauce with herbs and spices.

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 serve

  1. Poach the eggs one at a time in the strained sauce.

  2. Place each poached egg on a fried sippet.

  3. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

  4. Add butter to the sauce.

  5. Thicken the sauce with flour.

  6. 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
Set in the sauce as they poach, forming the main body of the dish.
Red wine
Gives the sauce its acidity and deep flavour as it reduces.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, glossier finish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the eggs.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs one at a time in the strained sauce. Eggs cooked together crowd the pan and cool the liquid, so whites spread and tangle. Poaching one at a time in gently simmering liquid keeps each egg compact and evenly set.

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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