Thus the perfect egg is cooked according to science: 32 minutes and changing the saucepan

Like everything in this life, also something as apparently simple as cooking an egg has its trick. We have all encountered a yolk too hard, or with a clear, the white part, too gumous. That happens because the two parts of an egg have different compositions, and need different cooking temperatures. The clear, or albumen, reaches its optimal consistency around 85 degrees, but at that temperature the yolk, which only needs 65 degrees, can be excessively hard. And cook an egg between 60 and 70 degrees, as many recommend, will provide us with a perfect yolk, but a white too raw may also. How to solve the problem?

Fortunately, a team of chemicals from the University of Naples has found a scientific and infallible method to get ‘the perfect egg’: to change, for exactly 32 minutes, the egg of a container with boiling water to another with water at just 30 degrees . “Many people have tried the cooked egg in this way,” says the chemical engineer Ernesto Di Maio, material expert and principal author of a newly published article in ‘Nature Communications’-, and were surprised by the taste and texture. Yes, it takes more time than usual, but I think that if you love someone, you must invest your time to do something correctly. And this is how an egg is done correctly «.

In his laboratory, Di Maio and his colleagues face the challenge of how to heat two different parts of a single object at different temperatures, which implies taking into account the characteristics of each material, normally plastics, to create inside the necessary processes .

One day, the scientist recalls, a colleague told him about an Italian chef who sold each of his cooked eggs for 80 euros. “This cook,” says Di Maio – separates the clear and the yolk, the kitchen at two different temperatures, the optimal ones, and then unite them elegantly with the other ingredients. It was really obvious to me to try what we know about the plastic forms in the egg ».

At different temperatures

To develop their method, Di Maio and his colleagues created a computer model of how an egg is cooking calculating how heat extends from the peel to the center. When solving the equations, they discovered that the best way to cook it evenly was to alternate between two different temperatures, which allows the two parts to be cook separately.

After putting into practice its method, the team studied the cooked eggs with high -resolution spectrometers and scanners, analyzed the proteins of both the clear and the yolk and discovered that both parties were better cooked than with any other method. The team also resorted to the help of a panel of eight sensory experts, who measured the taste, smell, humidity and other characteristics.

In addition, they discovered that in this way the eggs contained a greater amount of nutrients, among them the antioxidants called polyphenols, that the eggs prepared in other ways, although Di Maio admits that he does not know why.

In the end, this is the formula to get the final egg: Prepare two pans with water, one boiling and the other at 30 degrees. Place an egg in boiling water for two minutes. Then put it to the other pan for another two minutes. Repeat the operation 8 times, until you reach a total of 32 minutes. And you will get the perfect egg.

Of course, patience is required and we must recognize that the method is not too practical. But surely we can think of some occasion that the effort would be worth it.