The Best Way to Boil an Egg Is ... Tedious

Boiling an exceptional egg takes time. Thirty-two minutes to be exact. But it's not as easy as dropping the egg in water and walking away, according to a new study published Thursday in Communications Engineering. The perfect egg is a tedious business, according to researchers, who set about finding the ideal method for a boiled egg with a well-cooked white, also known as the albumen, but a still-creamy yolk, per the BBC. Because the albumen requires a temperature of 185 degrees Fahrenheit to cook, while the yolk requires a temperature of 149 degrees, soft-boiling results in a runny yolk but an undercooked white, while hard-boiling results in a well-cooked white but a not-so-creamy yolk.

Some prefer the "sous vide" style, in which an egg is cooked in a water bath at a temperature of 140 degrees to 158 degrees for roughly an hour, but a slimy albumen can still result. Emilia Di Lorenzo of the University of Naples Federico II and colleagues have come up with a different method, which they say results in a tastier and healthier egg. It makes use of computational fluid dynamics, a computer-based method for analyzing and predicting how liquids and gases flow. Their simulations suggested that moving an egg between a pot of boiling water (212 degrees) and a bowl of lukewarm water (86 degrees) every two minutes over 32 minutes would deliver the very best boiled egg.

Tedious, indeed. But this "periodic cooking" meant that the yolk remained at a consistent temperature of 153 degrees, while the temperature of the albumen ranged from 95 degrees to 212 degrees. The resulting egg had a soft, white albumen and a soft, creamy yolk. "You can almost spread it, like on bread," Di Lorenzo tells the AP. Researchers reported the egg was truly exceptional in texture, sensory qualities, and chemical structure, and contained more polyphenols—micronutrients linked to a decreased risk of cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and certain forms of cancer—than eggs cooked any other way. And with prices soaring, you might as well get the most out of the eggs you have. (More eggs stories.)