Culinarion:
Easier to Peel
3 October 2019
¶ In her post-magisterial masterpiece, The Way to Cook (Knopf, 1989), Julia Child published a method for boiling eggs that capped the doubtless scientific findings of the George Egg Board with the immense authority of the French Chef. According to this method, the final step is to remove the eggs from the boiling water and to drop them in a bath of ice water — in order, says Mrs Child, to make them easier to peel.
Thirty years later, the Times says otherwise. In a recently-published recipe, “Perfect Steam-Boiled Eggs,” Kenji López-Alt says,
Do not shock them in an ice bath after cooking; this makes them more difficult to peel.
Having accumulated, over the years, good reason to doubt wisdom of the Georgia Egg Board on this point, I didn’t bother with the ice bath the last time I boiled a few eggs, and, what d’you know: the eggs were indeed easier to peel without it.
I offer this as a public service to anyone still wondering how Julia Child even knew the GEB existed.