Skip to main content

To Poach Eggs

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

To Poach Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Use eggs that are a couple of days old for best results.

  2. Boil water in a kettle and strain it through a clean cloth into a stew pan until half full.

  3. Break an egg into a cup and gently slip it into the hot water once it boils.

  4. Let the egg sit until the white is set, then place the pan over moderate heat.

  5. Once the water boils again, the egg is ready; lift it out with a slotted spoon.

  6. Trim the ragged edges of the white and serve on a slice of toasted bread, with or without butter.

  7. Garnish with bacon, broiled beef, mutton, anchovies, sausages, or spinach if desired.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

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

  5. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, beef, pork, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More poached eggs recipes

on Toast 48with Mushrooms 11in Milk 9with Celery Sauce 8with Cream 7with Ham 7 See all 276 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes