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Spinach with Poached Eggs

A dish of spinach purée topped with poached eggs and garnished with puff pastry fleurons or fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spinach with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the spinach purée according to previous instructions.

  2. Poach the eggs until plump and trim them into a nice round shape.

Serve

  1. Serve the spinach on a hot dish, place the poached eggs on top, and garnish with fleurons or croutons.

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

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

  2. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the green base of the dish and carries the eggs.
Eggs
Provide the rich, set-yet-runny yolk that enriches the spinach.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs. Eggs poached until plump keep their shape when trimmed and placed on the spinach. Under-cooked whites spread and look ragged, while over-cooked yolks turn chalky and lose their silky texture.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread. 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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