I well remember the first time I encountered a poached egg. I was perhaps 12 or 13 at the time, and visiting my grandmother. She asked if I’d like some bacon and eggs, to which I naturally replied that I would. Soon thereafter, she presented me with a plate containing bacon and a mysterious globby white thing.
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Being a shy and courteous child, I forbore to ask “where’s the egg?” but I must have made some sort of inquiry as to what “this” was, because she subsequently enlightened me: that was the egg. Due to a combination of the aforementioned courteousness and the formidable nature of my ex-military grandmother, I refrained from asking WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT?? but I certainly wondered. I also wondered why, when already frying bacon, one would not also fry the egg, but who knows – perhaps the bacon was grilled.
The next time I was confronted with a poached egg was on my honeymoon, which was – as you have doubtless guessed – a good many years later. I ordered a Caesar salad, which arrived in a large deep bowl, with this white globby thing on top. I prodded it cautiously with my knife, upon which it ruptured and out flowed the yolk (to be discovered later lurking in the bottom of the bowl with a few tragic croutons). The white, meanwhile, had gone from globby to flobbery, and with no formidable elder relatives on hand to compel polite consumption, I lifted the wobbly glob aside and left it uneaten.
I have, in the subsequent near decade and a half, managed to avoid finding myself tete-a-plate with a poached egg. I would be only too happy to eat an egg fried (with or without bacon), or scrambled (with or without parsley, but certainly with well-buttered toast), or boiled (and then cut into halves stuffed with curried yolks), but I draw the line at poached. Alas, the line is a purely theoretical one at present, as my digestive system has blacklisted eggs these past three years. (Don’t get COVID, kids – it’s not worth it!)
Nevertheless, I do not go so far as to say there is no value in poached eggs at all. I refer you to Sam the Sudden, by P. G. Wodehouse. The titular Sam is planning to borrow some money from an old friend, who is sleeping off the excess Dutch courage required for his speech at an Old Boys’ Dinner.
Sam, entering the apartment indicated, found his old school friend lying on his back with open mouth and matted hair. He was snoring rhythmically. On a chair at his side stood a tray containing a teapot, toast and a cold poached egg of such raffish and leering aspect that Sam, moving swiftly to the dressing-table, averted his eyes as he passed….
A sense of something omitted, some little kindly act forgotten, arrested him at the head of the stairs. He returned; and taking the poached egg, placed it gently on the pillow beside his friend’s head.
He later explains to his new employer, Lord Tilbury:
‘He was asleep at the time, and I didn’t wake him. I just left a poached egg on his pillow and came away.’
Lord Tilbury swallowed convulsively and his eye sought that of Mrs Hammond in a tortured glare.
‘A poached egg?’ he whispered.
‘So that he would find it there when he woke,’ explained Sam.
Those of you with an interest in etymology will perhaps like to know that these eggs are not so named because they have been pinched from under a gamekeeper’s nose. The word goes back to the Old French “poche” for pocket – the white of the egg forming a pocket which holds the yolk.
Strangely, the word poach as in to pinch from under a gamekeeper’s nose appears to have a non-pockety Old French origin, despite the existence of poacher’s pockets – deep concealed pockets in the back of a coat or jacket, originally intended for carrying a brace of game while out hunting.
Poached Eggs: for Pillows not Pockets (and definitely not for me).