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Poached Eggs

Poached eggs served on toasted bread, optional boiled spinach, or toasted ham or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a clean frying pan with boiling water and set it over low heat.

Poach the eggs

  1. Break each egg into a cup and carefully slide them into the water.

  2. Let the eggs sit until the whites set, then return the pan to the heat.

  3. Once the water boils, the eggs will be done.

Serve

  1. Serve the eggs on toasted bread, or on boiled spinach, or on toasted ham or bacon.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + spinachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites set around the yolk as they heat, giving the poached egg its firm, rounded shape.

The step that matters

Let the eggs sit until the whites set. Egg whites firm up gently at moderate heat. If the water is kept rolling hard, the whites tear apart and the eggs lose their shape, so the heat must stay low while they set.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, ham):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, ham. 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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