It’s hard to mess up a scrambled or fried egg. But boiling one takes a bit more finesse. Cook too long, and your yolk will be too firm; too short, and your white will be too tender. Now, researchers say they’ve cracked the code for the ideal boiled egg.
Uneven boiled eggs arise from the different cooking temperatures required for the yolk and white. Yolks cook at 65°C, whereas whites reach their perfect consistency at 85°C. To find an approach that would achieve both, scientists used computer software to simulate the cooking process.
The perfect approach, they found, was cooking an egg in 100°C water for 2 minutes, then 30°C water for 2 minutes, and repeating for a total of 32 minutes. The strategy, which they dub “periodic cooking,” not only resulted in a “perfect” boiled egg, but also preserved more micronutrients.
Exploring the science behind everyday problems improves our lives, the researchers report today in Communications Engineering, “like the simple act of eating an egg.”
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