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Eggs, Poached
Put a pint of water into a stewpan, with four tea-spoonfuls of vinegar, and half a tea-spoonful of salt; place it over the fire, and while boiling break the eggs into it near the surface of the water, and let it boil gently about three minutes. Lay upon a dish a thin piece of toasted bread; take the eggs out carefully with a small slicer, and lay the slicer with the eggs upon a cloth for a second, to drain the water from them; then set them carefully upon the toast, and serve very hot.
A compact, workable method that needs only two adjustments: the water should not actually boil, and a pint of it is not enough depth.
- Stop the boilRolling water shreds the white before it can set. Bring it up, then drop the heat until the surface only trembles, with the odd bubble rising; three minutes at that temperature gives a set white and a liquid yolk.
- Depth over volumeA pint in a stewpan gives perhaps an inch and a half of water, so the egg lands on the bottom and flattens. Use a wide pan filled to about three inches and scale the vinegar and salt accordingly.
- The vinegarFour teaspoons to a pint is about a tablespoon and a third; reckoned against a 16 or a 20 fluid ounce pint that works out at roughly 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons per cup of water. That is on the generous side and can be tasted on the white; 1 teaspoon per cup is enough to help the albumen coagulate.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon to a pint is mild. Heavily salted water is often said to make the whites spread rather than gather, so keep it light regardless of how much water you use.
- "Break the eggs into it near the surface"This is the hinge of the recipe. Crack each egg into a cup first and tip it in from just above the water so it does not fall far and separate. Very fresh eggs hold together; older ones have thinner whites and will feather no matter how carefully you work.
- A small slicerA perforated lifter or fish slice. A slotted spoon does the same job, and the pause on a cloth to drain matters more than the tool -- water carried onto the toast turns it to pulp.
- Yield and servingThe recipe lays the eggs, plural, on one thin piece of toast. Butter the toast while hot, season the eggs after lifting, and serve immediately; poached eggs go cold faster than almost anything else on the table.
Poaching -- from the French pocher, to pocket, on the traditional explanation that the white forms a pouch around the yolk -- was one of the small tests of a Victorian kitchen, since it needs no equipment and hides no mistakes. It is a technique to be learned once and applied to everything from eggs on toast to the endless nineteenth-century garnishes of poached egg on spinach, on haddock, on hash. The vinegar is there for chemistry rather than flavour, acid speeding the setting of the egg white, a trick said to have been recorded in English cookbooks well before anyone could explain why it worked. The toast beneath is equally practical, catching the water the cook failed to drain.