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Breakfast

To Poach Eggs

A simple method of cooking eggs by gently slipping them into boiling water and serving on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Prepare the water

  1. Bring water to a boil in a kettle.

  2. Strain the boiling water through a clean cloth into a stew-pan until it is half full.

Poach the eggs

  1. Break an egg into a cup and gently slip it into the hot water.

  2. Let the egg sit until the white is set.

  3. Place the pan over moderate heat.

  4. Once the water boils again, the egg is ready.

Serve

  1. Use a slotted spoon to lift the egg and trim any ragged edges of the white.

  2. Serve the poached egg on toasted bread, with or without butter, or alongside bacon, beef, mutton, anchovies, sausages, or spinach.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The white sets around the yolk when heated, holding the egg together while it cooks in water.

The step that matters

Slipping the egg into the hot water. Egg white begins to coagulate as soon as it meets heat. Lowering the egg gently from a cup keeps the white close to the yolk, so it sets in a compact shape instead of spreading and tearing in the water.

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.

“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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