The Accidental Scientist: Science of Cooking Exploratorium Candy
Bread Eggs Pickles Meat Seasoning  Do You Know How to Hard Cook
an Egg?  You need an egg, a pot, some water—how complicated can
it be? But when we asked members of the Exploratorium staff how
to hard cook an egg, every person we asked gave us a slightly
different answer.  Even a task as seemingly simple as hard
cooking an egg involves making many choices. Here are a few—and
the science behind them:  Add salt to the water?   To prick or
not to prick?    Hot water or cold?  Some people put their eggs
in cold water; others heat the water to boiling, then drop in
the egg. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.  When
you drop an egg in boiling water, you heat it up quickly. When
you start with cold water, you heat it slowly. And the
difference in heating makes a difference in the cooked egg
white.  An egg white is about 10% protein and 90% water. It’s
the proteins that cause the egg white to solidify when you cook
it. Egg white proteins are