When I cut the top of my boiled egg today, I found the yolk right at the top. Usually they are more in the middle of the egg.
The eggs are free range (non organic) and well in date. They have not been kept in the fridge, but the pantry is fairly cool. In any case, I only bought them on Friday.
I was wondering if the yolk is lighter or heavier than the albumen, which might make it sink or float to the top of the shell. And, if so, how long it would take.
First of all, do you mean heavier in total, or do you mean more dense? Either way, why don’t you test it out for yourself?
Did anyone else initially read the question as “Question about Fags”, or am I the only one?
Interesting question. Usually the yolk is fair centered in a hard boiled egg, which doesn’t indicate much about it’s relative density. Maybe in your case the yolk was stuck to the shell near the top before it was cooked.
I do hope you mean the top of the egg is the little end, which is the proper end of an egg to open. I really can’t abide people who open an egg from big end.
Sounds like one of the chalaza wasn’t formed, or broke. The chalaza are those little white stringy bits in raw eggs. In the shell, they hold the yolk in the center.
While eggs will get a bigger air pocket inside as they age, and often the yolk ends up off center as the air bubble pushes it, this takes a while, and it doesn’t sound like your egg was old enough for that to be an issue.
The density of the yolk and the white are essentially identical.
Yes - always the smaller end, although with some eggs it isn’t all that obvious.
You can probably guess what I thought - maybe the egg was a lot older than the use-by date said. Likely a problem with free range.
So, how are things in Lilliput these days?
I will call that the top, yes. But it’s better to open them on the bottom, where there will be an air pocket. It makes it much, much easier to start pealing if you smash that air bubble. With good eggs, I can get the shell off in about a second.
If you cook them hard enough to ring, I guess you are right. Me - I prefer mine soft enough to dip with Marmite Soldiers.
One thing I will do for making deviled eggs is to set the eggs on their sides for a couple of days before boiling them. This allows the yolks to center more evenly and avoids those offset yolks. Presentation is so important. The easy way to do this is just to hold the carton closed with a rubber band and set it on its side.
Damn, I meant to say “One weird trick for making deviled eggs”.
Isn’t there something in computer programming having to do with
Big-Ending and Little Ending? I think I’ve seen “big endian,” actually.
Brilliant! Why haven’t I thought of this?
By and large, little-endian has won in the market, since Intel architectures going back to the 8080 were little-endian, and the modern descendants still are.
“Endianness.” Who would’ve thought. Why English has the largest vocabulary of any language on planet (so they say).
ETA: What are ten of them called?
Never having heard this terminology before, I looked it up. I absolutely am a savage, as I grip my toast with my naked hands, rend it asunder and jam the fragments willy-nilly into the very heart of the egg. I saw on the Wikipedia article that you can get cutters that are human-shaped.
Though my people date back many thousands of years, civilization truly is a wondrous thing.
I guess now I have to go look it up: I never heard (and can’t really divine the meaning) “to ring” an egg ("hard boil–>“ring”?). Judging by the equally foreign use of the word “soldiers” of toast, and the smoking-gun-and-corpse evidence of Vegemite, my keen sense of linguistics tells me these are Brit words.
Yes. That’s what I’ve been talking about the whole time. Big Endianness is an affront to Og.
Centering an Egg Yolk - ChefTalk.com
A video: How to Center the Yolks in Hard Boiled Eggs Video: Videos: RecipeTips.com
Or, develop this patent and become rich:
Method for centering an egg yolk during cooking
US 5063071 A
ABSTRACT
A method for centering an egg yolk during cooking of the egg is characterized by continuously rotating the egg in opposite directions about the longitudinal axis of the egg while the egg white solidifies. The egg is rotated in opposite directions for equal, relatively short intervals of time and at a relatively high speed. The rotation of the egg and gradual hardening of the egg white causes the egg yolk to migrate toward the enter of the egg resulting in a uniform layer of hardened egg white around the yolk of the cooked egg.
More detail from patent: [spoiler]The present invention relates to a method for centering an egg yolk during cooking of the egg.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
When an egg is stored in its raw state, the yolk of the egg rises within the interior of the egg. Thus, there is only a thin layer of egg white between the yolk and the egg shell. In extreme cases, the egg yolk completely displaces the egg white and abuts against the egg shell. If an egg is cooked with the yolk in this position and subsequently peeled, the relatively thin or non-existent layer of egg white is very often damaged, especially when eggs are peeled by machine. Often times, the egg yolk falls out of the cooked egg, whereby the egg is unusable. Losses resulting from damaged egg whites and lost yolks are very high when eggs are processed commercially.
A number of attempts have been made to center the yolk of the egg, i.e. to bring the egg yolk into a position where it is enclosed on all sides by a thick layer of egg white. Centering results when the egg yolk lies concentrically relative to the longitudinal axis of the egg and is spaced from the ends of the egg along the longitudinal axis so that the thickness of the layer of egg white between the end of the egg lying closest to the yolk corresponds roughly to the thickness of the egg white layer enclosing the egg yolk.
Eggs are normally stored with their longitudinal axes running vertically with the pointed end of the egg directed downwardly. Consequently, when an egg is stored for a long period of time, the egg yolk travels upwardly in the direction of the longitudinal axis toward the rounded end of the egg.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
One prior method which has been used in an attempt to induce centering of an egg yolk is to rotate the egg prior to cooking by 180° with respect to its original storage position in anticipation that in the new storage position, the egg yolk will return from its undesired outer position adjacent the rounded end of the egg toward the center thereof.
Aside from the fact that there are hardly any guarantees associated with this prior method, it is also quite inconvenient. When eggs are cooked commercially, comparatively large quantities of eggs are processed per unit time. It is not uncommon for high capacity egg cooking machines to cook between 10,000 to 20,000 eggs per hour. Thus, it is naturally quite time consuming and labor intensive to flip the eggs upside down from their original storage position prior to cooking in an attempt to center the yolk.
Another prior method which has been used in an attempt to center an egg yolk is to rotate the eggs unidirectionally during the cooking process. This method has proven not to be very effective, in particular because it does not cause the egg yolk to travel in the direction of the longitudinal axis. The yolk hardly changes position with respect to the longitudinal axis of the egg. At best, when an egg rotates unidirectionally during cooking, the yolk centers itself radially to the longitudinal axis of the egg but not along the longitudinal axis between the ends of the egg.
The present invention was developed in order to provide a novel method for centering the yolk of an egg during the cooking process, and particularly to move the egg yolk in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the egg to center the yolk longitudinally.[/spoiler]
I haven’t read the cheftalk discussion or seen the video (just a happy bibliographer here); let me know what you think.