To Boil Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Boil
Wash the eggs.
Place the eggs in a kettle of boiling water.
For soft-boiled eggs, boil for 3 minutes.
For hard-boiled eggs, boil for 5 minutes.
For salad eggs, boil for 15 minutes.
Cool and serve
Transfer the eggs to cold water to cool and peel easily.
Serve soft-boiled eggs immediately after cooking.
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 longer boiling gives firmer whites and yolks.
- Boiling water
- Carries heat evenly around the eggs to set their proteins.
- Cold water
- Chills the eggs to halt cooking and loosen the shell for easier peeling.
The step that matters
Timing the boil. Egg whites and yolks set progressively as they heat. Even a minute or two changes the result from runny to firm, so the boiling time chosen decides whether the egg is soft-boiled, hard-boiled or salad-ready.
“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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