How To Cook a Perfect Egg

There's no beating a gently-cooked egg. You’ll certainly get a silkier curd with slow cooking, but the real boon is flavor: like the difference between an egg from your own chicken and an egg from an assembly line, slow cooked eggs just taste better. They’re more deeply themselves. 

Alice B. Toklas cooked her eggs in a double boiler, using lots of butter - and plenty of time. The eggs are fantastic, but the process takes patience.  If you're not up for that, consider coddling your eggs.

A friend just gave me a set of extremely pleasing glass egg coddlers.  The steel handles do double-duty as clamps, so they don't leak. Almost without thinking - in a lot less than 40 minutes - you can butter the glass, crack in an egg or two, add a splash of cream, shake in a bit of salt and pepper. Clamp on the lid, and keeping an eye out for bubbles, bring the water to a steady simmer. Let it stay there: don't rush.

When the whites begin to set but are still short of completely solid, grab the coddler handles and set on the table. Serve with toast.

Fully-rounded, a little indulgent...delicious.