perfect egg yolks
“Maybe I have a hangup on soft boiled eggs, but I’m deeply fascinated by how something simple as an egg can be transformed into such a wide range of textures. I’m talking about pure eggs – no other ingredients added. Playing around with temperature and time can result in some very interesting yolk textures – yolks that are neither soft nor hard, but somewhere inbetween.” –Martin Lersch
temperatures
Proteins | Denaturation temperature (°C) |
From the egg white | |
Ovotransferrine | 61 |
Ovomucoïde | 70 |
Lysozyme | 75 |
Ovalbumine | 84,5 |
Globuline | 92,5 |
From the yolk | |
LDL | 70 |
HDL | 72 |
Alpha livetine | 70 |
Beta livetine | 80 |
Gamma livetine | 62 |
Phosvitine | > 140 |
Yolk | 65-70 (because of LDL) |
(Table 3. in “Molecular gastronomy: a scientific look to cooking”, Hervé This)
see also “Culinary Biophysics: on the Nature of the 6X°C Egg”, César Vega, Ruben Mercadé-Prieto, 10.1007/s11483-010-9200-1 (paywalled online)
poaching
- field testing several ways to poach an egg > http://www.b3ta.com/features/howtopoachanegg/
Some Science
- “The Science of Boiling an Egg” http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/
- The science of “Unboiling” an egg http://phys.org/news/2015-01-chemists-unboil-eggs.html
- …and derivations http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/CW061201-1.pdf