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Comment by daoxid | Hacker News Reader

Reading another article in this series, "Can You Boil an Egg Too Long?" [1] really made me smile. Apparently no one knows exactly what happens if you boil an egg for multiple months or years. This seems such a trivial thing compared to all the other stuff humans have discovered. On the other hand this also means almost anyone can expand the limits of human knowledge: you just need an egg, a reliable source of heat and water, and lots of patience. Granted, the knowledge gained may not change the world, but you will still be the first who is in possession of that knowledge!

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/science/randall-munroe-qu...

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Julia Child's tip on cooking a poached egg:

1. Poke a small hole with a pin in one side of egg.

2. Put the whole egg in boiling water for 10 seconds.

3. Remove egg, and run under cold water. (So you can handle it.)

4. Crack the egg back into the boiling water, and cook.

5. The poached egg comes out more uniform, and whole.

Does it though? I found a video of Julia using this method, but there is also step 4.5 where you crack the egg into an egg poacher, which is designed to help keep the egg nicely shaped. Maybe it's just the egg poacher doing its job?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvSnUmU509k

> but you will still be the first who is in possession of that knowledge!

Are you sure about that? How do you know that no one has done that experiment. Expanding the limits of human knowledge is not just about learning something new, but also sharing it in such a way that makes it part of humanities general knowledge base (even if still restricted to a relativly small group of people). Most people do not have the means to establish human knowledge in this way; and those that do are generally limited to a scope that does not contain hard-boiling eggs.

You'd probably have to make do with a blog post rather than a journal publication.

Also, publishing the result will almost certainly win you an Egg Noble prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize)

The experiment might not be that simple, though. You would no want to boil away all the water.

That means using a closed system (might go BOOM), starting with lots of water (expensive), or finding a way to add water while keeping the water at boiling temperature (you don’t have to add cold water, so that is probably not that hard, but not trivial, either)

I don’t think it’s that big of an explosion risk; it’s just a matter of finding the right pressure to hold water at 212F permanently. Pressure cookers already exceed this IIRC, so off the shelf equipment should suffice.

"Iron eggs", eggs boiled multiple times across multiple days, is a delicacy in Taiwan. In case anyone is curious to see what an egg boiled for longer than usual (with soy sauce and spices) looks like.

They seem to harden more and more upon boiling, so I'm not sure I subscribe to the idea that _eventually_ a super-boiled egg would disintegrate into soup...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_egg

Okay, I got way more of a kick than necessary from the image of a map which depicts 'you' traversing from 'the land of normal eggs' to '?'.

Also - and more relevant to HN - this is the first time I noticed Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has written for the New York Times. Good job on him for landing that gig! :D

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