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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the egg carefully into a cup.

  2. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Add the salt to the boiling water.

Poach and serve

  1. Pour the egg carefully into the simmering water.

  2. Let the water simmer gently until the egg is just set.

  3. Lift the egg out with a slotted spoon, trim neatly, and serve on a round of buttered toast.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Its proteins set with gentle heat, forming the soft, cohesive body of the poached egg.

The step that matters

Let the water simmer gently until the egg is just set. Boiling water agitates the egg and tears the white apart, while gentle simmering lets the proteins set slowly and hold a neat shape.

“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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