To Poach Eggs

Modern cookery for private families · Acton, Eliza · 1845
Source
Modern cookery for private families
Status
success · extracted 13 days ago
Not a recipe
No
Ingredients (4)
Instructions (17)
  1. Fill a wide, clean pan about half-full with clear spring water.
  2. Add a small saltspoonful of salt.
  3. Place the pan over a smoke-free fire.
  4. Break new laid eggs into separate cups with care, ensuring the yolks are not injured.
  5. When the water boils, draw the pan back from the fire.
  6. Gently slide the eggs into the water.
  7. Let the eggs stand until the whites appear almost set (about 1 minute).
  8. Move the pan back over the fire without shaking the eggs.
  9. Simmer the eggs for 2.5 to 3 minutes.
  10. Lift the eggs out separately with a slice.
  11. Trim off ragged edges quickly.
  12. Serve the poached eggs upon dressed spinach, minced veal, turkey, or chicken.
  13. Alternatively, serve for an invalid upon delicately toasted bread, sliced thick and freed from crust.
  14. For the bread serving, buttering the bread is an improvement but makes it less wholesome.
Poaching eggs in cups
  1. Break eggs into cups slightly rubbed with butter.
  2. Simmer the eggs in the cups.
  3. This method best preserves their round shape.
Original Text
TO POACH EGGS. Take for this purpose a wide and delicately clean pan about half-filled with the clearest spring-water; throw in a small saltspoonful of salt, and place it over a fire quite free from smoke. Break some new laid eggs into separate cups, and do this with care, that the yolks may not be injured. When the water boils, draw back the pan, glide the eggs gently into it, and let them stand until the whites appear almost set, which will be in about a minute: then, without shaking them, move the pan over the fire, and just simmer them from two minutes and a half to three minutes. Lift them out separately with a slice, trim quickly off the ragged edges, and serve them upon dressed spinach, or upon minced veal, turkey, or chicken; or dish them for an invalid, upon delicately toasted bread, sliced thick, and freed from crust: it is an improvement to have the bread buttered, but it is then less wholesome. Comparative time of poaching eggs. Swans’ eggs, 5 to 6 minutes, (in basin, 10 minutes.) Turkeys’ eggs 4 minutes. Hens’ eggs, 3 to 3-1/2 minutes. Guinea-fowls’, 2 to 3 minutes. Bantams’, 2 minutes. Obs.—All eggs may be poached without boiling if kept just at simmering point, but one boil quite at last will assist to detach them from the stewpan, from which they should always be very carefully lifted on what is called a fish or egg-slice. There are pans made on purpose for poaching and frying them in good form; but they do not, we believe, answer particularly well. If broken into cups slightly rubbed with butter, and simmered in them, their roundness of shape will be best preserved.
Notes
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