Scientists claim they’ve unlocked the secrets to cooking the “perfect” boiled egg, which apparently involves a 32-minute process. Italian researchers say this new technique, dubbed “periodic cooking”, is the “optimal” solution for evenly boiling an egg’s yolk and white.
The team say that this method not only cooks the egg throughout but also retains more nutrients than traditional boiling or sous vide methods – see more below on the latter. Their findings, which might dampen the spirits of those in a hurry for breakfast, were published in the journal Communications Engineering.
Dr Pellegrino Musto, leading the study, explained: “The yolk and white in chicken eggs cook at two different temperatures: the albumen cooks at 85 degrees Celsius, while the yolk cooks at 65 degrees Celsius. Conventional methods for cooking eggs by hard-boiling at 100 degrees Celsius result in the yolk being fully set, while cooking them at temperatures between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius in a water bath for one hour – a method known as sous vide – leaves the white undercooked.”
Dr Musto, from the Italian National Research Council and his team, have engineered a consistent egg-cooking technique by initially carrying out simulations using computational fluid dynamics software. He explained: “The simulations suggested a method that consists of alternating an egg between a pan of boiling water kept at 100 degrees Celsius and a bowl kept at 30 degrees Celsius, transferring the egg from one to the other every two minutes for a total duration of 32 minutes.”
Following the computer simulations, the researchers conducted real-world experiments to generate food samples for testing. The analysis involved various eggs, including hard-boiled, soft-boiled, and sous vide, assessing them for texture, taste, and chemical composition through Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry.
Describing the results, Dr Musto noted: “Periodically-cooked eggs had a soft yolk similar to that of a sous vide egg, while the consistency of the white was somewhere between that of sous vide and soft-boiled. Temperatures in the periodically-cooked egg white ranged between 35 and 100 degrees Celsius during cooking, while the yolk remained at a consistent temperature of 67 degrees Celsius.”
Dr Musto also revealed: “Chemical analysis suggested that the periodically-cooked egg yolks also contained more polyphenols – micronutrients which have been explored for their health benefits.” The research team believe their “egg-cellent” approach could also have implications in the curing and crystallisation of other materials.