There is a hilarious moment, in the 14th minute of Billy
Wilder’s Sabrina, when the master
chef who teaches Ms Audrey Hepburn’s gourmet cooking class speaks the immortal
words: ‘Bonjours, mesdames et messieurs. Yesterday we have learned the correct
way how to boil water…’
Ah, how we all laughed when we first heard that! How could anybody
not know how to boil water?? Is there anything simpler and more obvious? Unfortunately,
the joke is not all that farfetched. Some of the simplest and most obvious
processes cause people tremendous trouble. Thus, to my utter astonishment, I
learned quite recently that more than half the population of the civilised West
does not know how to boil an egg!
Will you believe it???
Now, not all our cases are as desperate as that of Mr Ivan Lendl,
the grand Czech tennis champion, who once during an interview confessed that
his mother and sister always cooked for him and that he had no idea how a
kitchen worked. To illustrate this, Mr Lendl told of this one evening when both
his beloved women were out and he was hungry. He decided to boil an egg for
himself. So he put an egg in a pan and the pan on the fire and went to watch TV
while waiting for the process to run its course. Three minutes later there was
an immense blast in the kitchen, and when he rushed over, he found that the egg
had exploded and was now plastered all over the ceiling and the kitchen walls.
‘You see,’ Mr Lendl explained with a smile, ‘I had no idea that one has to put
water into the pan when one boils an egg…’
No, 99.99 % of the population, will never make such a mistake. But
what the greater majority of that same population does not know how to do is to
cook an egg to their full satisfaction.
As we all know there are three states of boiled egg: soft, medium and hard. And
only all too many people can only get the hard-boiled egg right (by letting it
cook for 20 minutes…). When they try to produce a soft-boiled egg, it often comes
out like runny goo. When they aspire to a semi-soft egg (and most do), it usually
turns out too hard. A family breakfast fails dismally once again… Lawyers and
divorce papers appear on the horizon…
All sorts of ingenious devices have been invented, produced, brought
onto the market and propagandized to help house wives and tennis champions to
produce the boiled eggs of their choice and preference. There are kitchen
timers, hour glasses, miniature pressure cookers, smart phone apps, litmus
tests and termo-chemical adhesive strips that must be wrapped around the egg
shell and change colour when the prescribed cooking period has passed. In ultra
religious Spain there even used to be an apostolically approved pious method to
guarantee the perfect egg: a house wife would mutter four Ave Maria’s over the
pan for a soft boiled egg, six for a semi-soft one, and an entire rosary for
the harder variety. The Holy Virgin of Miracles took care, we hope, of the rest…
But all this is perfectly needless. Come now, people: it ain’t
rocket science. If only you know what you’re doing, you will need no expensive
aids, electronic devices, satellite guidance or help from on high. All you need
are the instructions from a man who knows what he’s doing, and the discipline
to follow those instructions to the
letter.
So here is…
Alfred B. Mittington’s ‘Correct
Way To Boil An Egg…’
Put a normal sized egg in a pan and fill the pan with cold water
until the egg is completely submerged. Do not punch holes in the shell or
mistreat the egg in any other way. It makes no sense and no difference for the
end result. Do not use already boiling water either; it will completely disturb
the timing.
Put half a teaspoon of salt, or a fair splash of vinegar into the
water. This raises the boiling temperature slightly, but – more importantly –
it seals a crack if the shell happens to burst, so that you do not end up with
an empty wind-egg floating in ugly egg soup.
Put the pan onto a high fire and bring to a boil.
As soon as sturdy, unstoppable bubbles rise up from beneath the egg,
making it dance, lower the fire to medium height (the water must continue to
bubble) and bring out the stopwatch or any other sort of watch with a
second-hand.
From this very moment:
If you want a soft-boiled
egg: count 3 minutes, and not a second more!
If you want a semi-soft
egg: count 4 minutes, and not a second more!
If you want a hard-boiled
egg: let the water boil for 5 minutes at least.
As soon as the prescribed time is over – and not a second more! –
remove the egg from the pan and submerge it entirely in cold water. This stops
the congealing process. If you want your egg warm, you can take it out of it
cool bath after some 30 seconds and serve it. If you want your egg cold you
will need to keep it in there for a considerable time (10 minutes usually).
