Marlene Parrish - What Einstein Told His Cook 2

The red spots are indeed blood, from the rupture of a blood vessel on the yolk’s surface that occurred during formation of the egg, or by a similar mishap in the wall of the oviduct. Less than one percent of all eggs laid have blood spots.

The routine inspection process of candling—turning the eggs on rollers in front of high-intensity lights (originally they were held up to a candle) to reveal their interior qualities—catches most eggs with blood spots, and they are removed. But a few inevitably sneak though and reach the market. They are perfectly fit to eat, although Jewish dietary law rejects them as not kosher.

Instant Vanilla Custard Sauce (Crème Anglaise)

Here’s a trick I learned from Seattle chef Jerry Traunfeld of the Herbfarm. Early in his career, when he was a pastry chef at Stars, Jeremiah Towers’ restaurant in San Francisco, Traunfeld had to make gallons and gallons of crème anglaise every day. It took way too much time, he said, when he’d rather be creating pastries. So he developed a reverse-cooking method for the sauce that is risk-free and speedy.

Instead of adding egg yolks to boiling milk, he adds boiling hot milk directly and quickly to slightly warmed egg yolks. The milk cooks them instantly with no risk of curdling. The custard immediately coats a spoon, which is the standard test for the finished sauce. It thickens further as it cools in the refrigerator. Hard to believe, until you try it.

Called by either its English or its French name, this sauce is wonderful warm or cold, served over apple dumplings or pie, strudel, chocolate cake, gingerbread, bread pudding, or even baked fruit. To dress it up for company, substitute 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier or Cointreau for the vanilla. And in season, transform it into eggnog by adding freshly grated nutmeg and rum.

6 large egg yolks, at room temperature

½ cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 cups whole milk

¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

FOR EGGNOG:

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1 tablespoon rum, or more to taste

1.Warm a medium bowl by rinsing it under hot tap water; dry. Place the egg yolks in the warmed bowl and place the bowl over barely warm water in a larger bowl. (You just want to take the chill off the yolks.)

2.Before proceeding to the next step, pick up the yolk bowl from the warming bowl and place it on a damp, flat washcloth. This will prevent the bowl from skidding on the counter when you start to whisk.

3.In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, salt, and milk. Place over medium heat and stir constantly until the sugar has dissolved and the milk is coming to a boil.

4.As soon as the milk boils and as it rises in the pan, immediately remove the pan from the heat and quickly whisk the milk into the egg yolks, whisking briskly for the first 3 to 5 seconds and then switching to a slow stirring motion until all the milk is in (takes about 15 seconds). Continue to stir slowly and blend without any aeration for another 10 seconds. The yolks will cook without further heating.

5.Stir in the vanilla.

6.Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a container to remove those thick, cordlike strands of egg white (chalazae) that anchor the yolk in the center of the egg. Refrigerate until ready to serve. The mixture will thicken as it cools.

MAKES 3 CUPS SAUCE, OR FOUR ¾ CUP SERVINGS OF EGGNOG.

A YOKE OF YOLKS

How do double-yolk eggs form? Do the yolks replace the space that would have been taken by the white? Or is it a bigger egg?

In general, the yolks are smaller but the eggs overall are bigger.

About 3 to 5 percent of hens’ eggs have two yolks. Some hens, driven by their genes and the conformation of their oviducts, seem to specialize in producing these twins. When you find a double-yolker in an otherwise normal dozen, it’s a mistake—not of the hen, but of the inspectors at the egg farm, because all eggs are candled before being sold, and candling will show up any double-yolk eggs, which are put aside for special uses.

There’s nothing wrong with eating a double-yolk egg when you come across one. In fact, double-yolkers are in demand for their novelty, and the supply can’t keep up. When you do come across one, fry it sunny sides up.

A CRACK ATTACK

I recently read somewhere that adding salt to the water before boiling eggs prevents the eggshells from cracking. It has worked for me the three times I’ve done so. What is the chemical explanation for this effect?

There is no chemical explanation because it’s not true. Salt (sodium chloride) has no effect on eggshells (calcium carbonate), either chemically or physically.

An eggshell can crack when there is a sudden temperature difference between a cold shell and hot water. The heat makes the shell expand quickly but unevenly, because it has different thicknesses in different places. The uneven heating causes stresses that can fracture the shell at its weakest points. (Hold an egg up to a very bright light and you’ll often see fine cracks in shells that look perfectly intact from the outside.) An egg may also crack if the air space inside the large end expands too quickly, before it can seep out slowly through the porous shell. A good precaution is to puncture the large end with a pushpin to let the air bubble out harmlessly as the egg heats.

To cook crack-free eggs, avoid plunging cold eggs into hot water. Instead, put them into a pot of cold water and then heat the pot until the water begins to boil. As soon as you see a few bubbles, turn down the heat to a simmer. Depending on how long you simmer them, the eggs will cook through the entire spectrum of doneness, from coddled in 1 or 2 minutes to hard-“boiled” in 12 to 15 minutes.

So how do we explain your experience? With all due respect, three trials do not a scientific experiment make. How do you know that the eggs would have cracked without the salt? Please repeat your experiment with six dozen eggs, half of them cooked with salt and half without. Record the number of cracks in each case and turn in your lab report to me by next Thursday.

But wait! There is indeed some wisdom in salting the egg water. Read on.

DUTCH BOY IN A BOTTLE

Several people have told me that adding a little vinegar to the water when boiling eggs prevents the shell from cracking. Does it? And how?

It doesn’t. And that gets me off the hook for your second question.

The acetic acid in vinegar will coagulate the protein in any albumen (egg white) leaking out of a shell that already has a crack in it. That’s how acids in general act on proteins in general. But salt can have the same effect. Thus, adding vinegar, lemon juice (citric acid), or salt to the water is insurance for pessimists who expect their eggs to crack and want to stem the exodus of albumen. Acids and salt are leak stoppers, not leak preventers; they are fingers in the dike, so to speak.

THE EGG-SPINNING OLYMPICS

When I hard-boil eggs, why do the shells sometimes peel off quite easily and at other times they stick like crazy to the whites?

When the eggs are done, cool them down quickly in cold running water. That shrinks the albumen away from the shell somewhat and makes an egg easier to peel. (It also keeps the yolks from turning green; see the following question.) Very fresh eggs are harder to peel because the albumen tends to stick to the membrane on the inside of the shell. But after several days the membrane retreats and the sticking tendency diminishes, so don’t hard-cook your freshest ones.