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Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Poached eggs served in a lightly thickened cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Combine hot water, vinegar, and salt in a frying pan.

  2. Break each egg into a saucer and carefully slip it into the hot water.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the white is set.

  4. Lift the eggs out with a skimmer into a hot dish.

  5. Empty the pan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add cream (or milk and butter) to the pan.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Thicken with a little cornstarch.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Pour the sauce over the poached eggs.

  6. Serve on toast or without.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the protein in the hot water to form the poached body of the dish.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce when milk is used instead of cream.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the white is set. Eggs must be removed once the white is firm but the yolk is still soft. Simmering too long overcooks the yolk, while lifting them too early leaves the white runny and the egg falling apart.

“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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