Where Did the Boiled Egg Go?

There are few things as difficult as cooking an egg exactly right. Is that why the hospitality industry rarely (if ever) bothers anymore? Even during the current breakfast renaissance? Food editor at large Marjan thinks that’s a shame. A boiled egg is perfection in a little shell.

In French brasseries and petit cafés, you still occasionally see them sitting on the bar: racks of boiled chicken eggs that you can peel yourself with your coffee, Pernod or wine, and sprinkle with the equally ready-and-waiting containers of salt and pepper. In the Netherlands, you’ll only see them in the rapidly disappearing cafés with Persian rugs on the tables. Are the Dutch too commercially minded to put a ‘dish’ on the menu that you can’t charge even a euro for, but that does require cooking skills?

How to make Turkish dürüm at home

Deep-fried?

Even with the current boom in breakfast spots and—especially in Amsterdam—’petit cafés’, we’re still not seeing a revival of the boiled egg. Poached, scrambled, fried, incorporated into shakshuka or placed on an avocado creation, deep-fried, brûléed, even smoked: yes. But a boiled egg, pure and simple? Nope.

A shame. A boiled egg is a dish in its own right. It has different textures, tastes different from the inside out, and changes in flavour and bite depending on how long or how briefly you boil it. The latter even applies twice over, because egg white naturally behaves differently from egg yolk. So there are possibilities aplenty. And all with such a compact, affordable ingredient.

Egg-and-salt pairing

Sprinkle salt over it and your egg unfolds all the flavours that had been locked inside its shell until then, with each type of salt highlighting a different aspect. Like a wine-and-food pairing, but an egg-and-salt pairing.

A boiled egg is perfection in a little shell

While backpacking, a boiled egg makes a welcome meal. I still have one of those small yellow plastic containers that holds two boiled eggs, and even has a separate compartment for a pinch of salt.

A boiled egg is also an experience—the hospitality industry’s magic word—because you have to peel it yourself, or cut off the cap as if you were sabring a bottle of champagne. Peeling it is quite zen in itself. Just try removing the shell without sacrificing too much of the egg white. It requires patience (and a good shock technique after cooking).

Perfect egg

On many modern restaurant menus, you currently see ‘the perfect egg’. But that isn’t old-fashioned boiled—it has been treated sous vide. Delicious too. Just like the boiled egg you can get as an extra option in your Japanese ramen. Or Indonesian sambal telor, a boiled egg in a spicy, aromatic sauce. For enthusiasts, even the Chinese century egg is hard to resist—a duck egg that matures for 100 days in a mixture of charcoal and quicklime. But none of them are simple, pure, boiled eggs.

So here’s a plea to the hospitality industry to bring back the art of cooking and serving eggs. Take note: my perfect egg is soft-boiled—but not too soft—with the yolk already slightly set where it meets the white, while still syrupy and runny in the centre. With soldiers—strips of toasted white bread—please, along with butter, freshly ground black pepper and Ibiza salt.

Want to cook the perfect egg yourself?

British laboratory chef Heston Blumethal described in The Guardian how to get it right time and time again. You do have to be a fan of very soft-boiled eggs.

Where can you order a boiled egg?

Café Binnenvisser, Bilderdijkstraat 36, Amsterdam. From day one, they’ve served eggs here on the bar without hard-boiling them, in tribute to the cafés in the Jordaan where this was customary.
Café George, various locations in Amsterdam. Eggs any style, including boiled.
Le Pain Quotidien, various locations in the Netherlands and abroad. A soft-boiled organic egg as part of the breakfast.
Café Caron, Frans Halsstraat 28HS, Amsterdam. Available from the bar menu: a hard-boiled duck egg.