To Boil Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the eggs in cold water.
Boil water in a stew-pan.
Cook and cool
Add the eggs to the boiling water.
Boil for 4 minutes for very soft, 5 minutes for soft yolk, 6 minutes for hard yolk, or 8 minutes for salad.
Transfer the eggs to a basin of cold water to prevent dark yolks.
If not serving immediately, remove them 1 minute early and cover to keep warm.
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 set with heat, so the white firms and the yolk thickens to the chosen softness.
The step that matters
Transferring the eggs to cold water. Overcooking and slow cooling let iron in the yolk react with sulfur in the white, forming a dark grey-green ring. Moving the eggs straight into cold water stops the cooking and prevents this discolouration.
“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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