No. 2856

Boiled Eggs

Œufs a la Coque

When only a few eggs are required proceed as follows: Boil some water in a saucepan, remove it from the fire, and plunge the eggs into the liquid with a skimmer, being careful not to break the shells; cover the saucepan to allow the water to boil up again, and from this time cook the eggs for three minutes. Should they be large or freshly laid take the saucepan off after three minutes, leaving the eggs one minute longer in the liquid.

Eggs may also be plunged into cold water, put over a brisk fire and taken off at the first boil.

Another Way is to plunge them into boiling water and let cook for one minute after the water has boiled up again, then withdraw the vessel from the fire, and leave them in the water for five minutes. Eggs are cooked by steam in four minutes. The ordinary method is the first mentioned. However it is very difficult to tell exactly how long to boil an egg, for some like them scarcely heated through, while others prefer the whites slightly hard. Boiled eggs are generally eaten from their shells with a spoon, but many empty the contents into a glass or cup, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a little fresh butter, then mixing thoroughly. Boiled eggs should be served in folded napkins or in imitated chickens made of china.

← No. 2855 Eggs au Miroir a la Tivolier Eggs & Omelets No. 2857 Hard-Boiled Eggs and Aurora →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives four methods for the same three-minute egg, which tells you he did not entirely trust any of them. The variable he is quietly working around is the temperature of the egg going in, not the timing.

Start with the egg's temperature, not the clockA refrigerated egg will run roughly a minute behind a room-temperature one in the same water. Ranhofer says nothing about this — the only allowances he makes are for large or very fresh eggs — but his kitchen drew eggs from a larder rather than a 38F refrigerator, so his timings assume a warmer egg than yours.
"Œufs à la coque"Literally "eggs in the shell" — the soft-boiled egg eaten from an eggcup. Not to be confused with œufs mollets, which are peeled, or œufs durs, hard-boiled.
Off the heat is deliberateOff the heat -- Ranhofer does not say why he lifts the pan before the eggs go in, though it plausibly reduces the shells knocking about at a rolling boil; note that he then covers the pan so the water comes back to the boil before the three minutes are counted. Modern practice usually cooks at a bare simmer instead.
"Freshly laid" means something different nowHe adds a minute for eggs that are large or very fresh; fresh eggs have noticeably thicker whites, which is the likely reason. A supermarket egg is typically a couple of weeks old and needs no such allowance.
Three minutes gives a liquid whiteAt three minutes from a hot start you get a barely-set white and a fully liquid yolk. Four to five minutes gives a set white with a runny yolk; six to seven gives a jammy yolk. Choose by preference, as he says.
The steam methodRanhofer allows four minutes in steam. A steamer basket over an inch of boiling water with the lid on is the modern equivalent; expect a very soft egg at four minutes.
The cold-water startHis second method — cold water brought to a boil and taken off at the first bubble — depends entirely on burner speed and how much water is in the pan, and is the least reproducible of the four.
ServingThe folded napkin presumably kept the eggs warm as well as looking well. The "imitated chickens made of china" were novelty china egg servers in the shape of a hen; an eggcup and a warmed plate do the same work.
A note on runny yolksEgg white and yolk that never reach 160F carry a small residual salmonella risk. Anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised should use pasteurized-in-shell eggs.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole of a great restaurant kitchen in one volume — over a thousand pages, from consommés to sugar sculpture. That such a book pauses to explain how to boil an egg is not a lapse but the point: Ranhofer was writing for professional cooks and ambitious households alike, and he treats the simplest operations with the same seriousness as the elaborate ones. His hedging here — four methods, an admission that "it is very difficult to tell exactly how long to boil an egg" — is candid for a man who elsewhere specifies garnishes to the leaf. He also records the habit of tipping the egg into a glass with salt, pepper and butter and mixing it together, a practice that later generations in Britain knew as "egg in a cup."