I love eggs. Eggs, grapefruit and cuttlefish are probably three of my favourite ingredients. I started to cook eggs at 63 degrees Celsius for the first time at the opening of Pierre at the Mandarin Oriental in 2006. On the first lunch menu, one of the dishes was a poached egg with sautéed prawns, tuna and tomato.

During a busy service, it is always difficult to prepare perfect poached eggs. I was never happy with the result and one afternoon I tried to resolve the problem with this particular egg dish. Maybe only a chef can understand the intensity of trying to cook a perfectly poached egg. It was more important for me than a trip to Mars.

Before this exercise in problem solving, I thought I knew eggs very well, particularly the eggs cooked at 65 degrees Celsius invented by Hervé This and I used them a lot in Pierre Gagnaire’s restaurant in Paris. For This, the perfectly cooked egg is done at 65 degrees, but for my dish I wanted an egg with a melted yolk inside of the soft white.

At 65 degrees, the yolk starts “to cook” and harden and the white start “to cook” at 62 degrees.  The yolk has a very unique and particular consistency at 65 degrees. So that was why I decided to experiment by cooking eggs at 64 degrees, then at 63, then at 62 and finally at 61 degrees.  I discovered that it is futile to cook the eggs at a temperature less than 62 degrees because the white will not be cooked.  The white only starts to cook at 62 degrees, not before. I was also happy with the results at 64 degrees and 63 degrees, but the eggs were breaking a lot and it was very difficult to use during the service.

So I tried different eggs to check if the problem was coming from my cooking method or from the eggs I used. After many tries, I realised that the result is different depending on the kind of egg. Finally after weeks of searching, I knew I found the right egg because after cooking it at 63 degrees, I opened the shell and saw the perfect egg. It was an important moment for me.  The egg was shining with a perfect shape and warm with a liquid yolk.  I was very happy as I had never seen an egg like this before.  For me, it was the perfect poached egg. I found my perfect egg and it is cooked at 63 degrees.

Since then, I use 63 degree eggs regularly in different preparations, of course with truffles (black or white) is perfect, but I use it in dessert, fried, (yes fried it is very interesting!), with liquid nitrogen, with a crab soup and also with quail’s eggs and goose eggs. It is regularly on the menu of St. George in different ways.  However, my favorite is still a 63 degree egg served simply with some sautéed mushroom and warm crispy toast.

A la Prochaine!

P.S. The books of Hervé This are very interesting and easy to read if you want to learn more about eggs. Some of them are translated in English. I recommend particularly Traité élémentaire de cuisine.