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Soft-boiled Eggs

Soft-boiled eggs are cooked in water just below boiling for 10 to 20 minutes, or boiled for 3 minutes for a quick method.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Soft-boiled Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the eggs in water just below boiling point (about 165°F).

  2. Keep the water at this temperature for 10 minutes for soft, jelly-like eggs.

  3. For firmer eggs, leave them for 20 minutes.

  4. For a quick method, boil the eggs for 3 minutes and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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 white and yolk set with heat, so the cooking time decides how firm or jelly-like the texture becomes.

The step that matters

Keeping the water just below boiling. Egg proteins set gradually as the temperature rises. Water held just below boiling heats the eggs gently, giving a soft, jelly-like yolk. A rolling boil cooks the eggs faster and can make the whites rubbery and the yolks chalky.

“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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