Boiled Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Place the eggs in a deep saucepan.
Pour boiling water over the eggs until covered.
Cover the saucepan and set it on a cool part of the stove.
Cook
Cook for 10 minutes for soft, creamy eggs.
For medium eggs, cook for an additional 5 minutes.
For hard eggs, leave in the water for 20 minutes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Egg proteins set with heat, so cooking time decides whether the yolk stays soft or firms up.
- Boiling water
- Supplies the heat that cooks the eggs gently once they are covered.
The step that matters
Covering the eggs and setting the pan on a cool part of the stove. Eggs cooked in water that stays just below a hard boil cook evenly, while a rolling boil can crack shells and make whites tough. Timing is what sets the yolk texture, so the cook should time from when the pan is covered.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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