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CEufs Poches a LA Tomate

Poached eggs served in simmered tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

CEufs Poches a LA Tomate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the tomato sauce in a sauté pan and skim if necessary.

Poach the eggs

  1. Carefully drop in the eggs and cook until the whites are firm to the touch.

  2. Baste the eggs well with the sauce during cooking.

Serve

  1. Lift the eggs carefully with a slotted spoon, trim them, and serve on a plate.

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. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites set into firm shapes while the yolks stay soft, forming the dish's main body.
Tomato sauce
Forms the poaching liquid and coats the eggs with flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Keep the whites firm before lifting the eggs. Egg whites set as they heat, and lifting too early can tear the delicate whites apart. Waiting until they are firm to the touch helps each egg hold its shape when moved to the plate.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg. 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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