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Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Poached eggs served with a creamy sauce made from cream, butter, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Poached Eggs a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Combine hot water, vinegar, and salt in a frying pan.

  2. Break each egg into a saucer and carefully slip it into the hot water.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the white is set, then lift out with a skimmer.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the cream and butter (if using milk) in a separate dish.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and cornstarch to the cream mixture.

  3. Let the cream mixture boil once.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream mixture over the poached eggs.

  2. Serve on toast or without.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The white sets around the yolk during poaching, forming the main body of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream mixture as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder flavor in the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Slip the eggs gently into barely simmering water. Eggs dropped into vigorously boiling water tear and scatter, while gentle heat lets the white coagulate around the yolk and hold its shape. Lifting out once the white is set prevents overcooking the yolk.

“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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