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Poach - cook (an egg), without its shell, in or over boiling water
Strange that a method of cooking should share its name with a type of stealing. There does not seem to be any correlation between the meanings (even though egg-stealing is a known form of poaching!).
According to an undisclosed source it is derived thus: Back-formation from Middle English poched, poached, from poche, dish of poached eggs.
From Old French, from past participle of pochier, to poach eggs.
From poche, pocket, bag (from their appearance), of Germanic origin.
The Book Of Household Management
Whilst conducting research for this site, I stumbled on a great little site containing text from what they call, "ex-classics". Books that were once deemed classics but not anymore.
"The Book of Household Management", by Mrs. Isabella Beeton, was published in 24 parts in 1859-1861, and then in book form in 1861. It contains a great section on eggs and apparently was an immediate success (in its time), it has long been regarded as the quintessence of Victorian cookery. It has been published and republished in new editions which modified the original more and more; when the last edition appeared in the 1960's little if any trace of Mrs. Beeton's work was left.
Mrs Beeton it seems had been poaching eggs this way at least 160 years ago and I'm sure the method itself is older still.
Here's a link to the index of the book as it contains some great advice on how to run your household. If you want to go straight to chapter XXXIII the egg section follow this link instead. You'll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find it.
