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Eggs En Matelote

Eggs poached in a wine and stock sauce, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eggs En Matelote

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine claret, water or stock, bouquet garni, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the bouquet garni from the saucepan.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs one at a time in the liquid.

  2. As each egg cooks, place it on a piece of toasted bread on a hot dish.

  3. Once all eggs are cooked, add a little butter and flour to the remaining liquid and bring to a boil.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve over the eggs and serve.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Claret
Provides the wine base and acidity that flavours the poaching liquid and sauce.
Eggs
Form the main dish, set in the hot liquid while keeping their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the remaining liquid into a smooth sauce.
Toasted bread
Serves as a crisp base that soaks up the sauce under the eggs.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs one at a time in the liquid. Eggs cooked in a gently simmering liquid hold their shape best when added one at a time, so each egg has room and the whites set around the yolk without spreading into the others.

“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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