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Eggs “en Matelote.”

Poached eggs served in a wine and stock sauce with herbs, onion, garlic, spices, and butter thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Eggs “en Matelote.”

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine red wine, stock, herbs, onion, garlic (if using), spices, pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Boil the strained sauce for a few minutes in the same saucepan.

  5. Add butter and thicken with flour, cooking until the flour is done.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs one at a time.

  2. Place each poached egg on a fried sippet.

  3. Serve the sauce over the poached eggs.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Red wine + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main dish, setting when poached and providing richness.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth finish to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be cooked long enough to lose its raw starchy taste and to thicken fully; stirring prevents lumps, and the sauce should not be boiled hard once butter is added.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, onion, garlic, pepper, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, onion, garlic, pepper, egg, butter, flour. 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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