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Time for Boiling Eggs

A guide to boiling eggs at different times for poached, soft‑boiled, and hard‑boiled results.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Time for Boiling Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. For poached eggs, cook for 4 minutes.

  2. For soft-boiled eggs, cook for 2½ to 3 minutes.

  3. For hard-boiled eggs, cook for 6 to 8 minutes.

  4. To prepare soft-boiled eggs for someone with a weak stomach, bring 1 pint of water to a boil, add the egg, remove from heat, and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

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
Proteins that set with heat, firming the white and thickening the yolk as cooking time increases.

The step that matters

Watch the cooking time. Egg proteins set gradually with heat. A difference of even half a minute can turn a soft yolk fully firm, so timing decides the final texture.

“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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