Emma

PERFECT SOFT-BOILED EGG

It took me a long time to come around to Jane Austen’s Emma. I blame this mostly on the fact that my English teacher played Clueless for us before we read the book, a tactic that made most of the girls in my class adore Emma right from the get-go, but it sullied the experience for me. Every time Emma spoke, I heard the whiny Valley Girl drone of Cher Horowitz. Besides that, my friend-crush on Elizabeth Bennet was at that point so deep that I didn’t feel I had any room left in my heart for the deeply flawed Emma Woodhouse. She is insensitive and spoiled, irritatingly beautiful and talented, careless and often, well, clueless.

Unexpectedly, it was butchery that brought me back to Emma. Say what you will about Emma Woodhouse, but that young lady knows her way around a pig, which I happen to find endearing. Two entire pages of the novel center on what to do with a newly killed porker from the Woodhouse property. Emma’s father, ever the worrier, is overwhelmed by the task of sending pork to a neighbor, but Emma puts him at ease, telling him confidently, “My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly in any manner they like.”

Last spring, while I was attempting to make a traditional English country ham at the butcher shop, this scene popped into my head, and that night I picked up Emma again for the first time since high school. My reading experience the second time around was entirely different from the first, perhaps because I’ve gotten even more obsessive about literary food scenes in my old age. Of all of Austen’s novels, Emma gives readers the clearest glimpse into the unglamorous, everyday tasks of running a household in the early 1800s, a time when even a woman as privileged as Emma Woodhouse would have been knowledgeable about the raising, killing, and preserving of her family’s livestock.

In her letters, Austen herself writes often of the livestock kept at Steventon, where she lived with her family. In one letter she tells her sister, Cassandra, about providing a neighbor with pork from their land, much as Emma and her father do in the novel, saying, “My father furnishes him with a pig from Cheesedown; it is already killed and cut up, but it is not to weigh more than a stone; the season is far too advanced to get him a larger one. My mother means to pay herself for the salt and the trouble of ordering it to be cured by the spareribs, the souse, and the lard.” Even if the Austen women aren’t in the kitchen stirring the pots and baking the bread, each member of the Austen family is involved at some level in the keeping and processing of livestock and produce, knowledge that wouldn’t have been at all uncommon at the time or unladylike to discuss in letters.

Mr. Woodhouse, Emma’s hypochondriac father, whose “own stomach [can] bear nothing rich,” is the catalyst for most of the food talk in the novel. He is constantly trying to convince people to eat something other than what they are eating, to eat less, or to eat nothing at all. At Mrs. Weston’s wedding he anxiously tries to dissuade the guests from eating the wedding cake, worried that it “might certainly disagree with many—perhaps with most people, if not taken moderately.” In another scene, Emma serves minced chicken and scalloped oysters to her dinner guests, while her father, whose “feelings were in sad warfare” on such occasions, recommends that they all eat gruel, as he is, for their health.

When no one pays attention to him, he tries to push one guest in another gustatory direction, saying: “Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see—one of our small eggs will not hurt you.” I remember thinking that this line was particularly funny my first time reading it—the idea that someone could understand boiling an egg better than anybody else seemed especially ridiculous. What is there to understand about the world’s simplest culinary task? I didn’t know then what I know now, which is that the method of perfectly soft-boiling an egg is (and apparently always has been) a contentious issue.

The first thing I was ever asked to do when I went for a job trial at a restaurant was soft-boil an egg. The restaurant was fancy—much fancier than I had any business walking into with only home cooking skills in my back pocket—and I was shocked and ecstatic that this was my first test. I had hard-boiled a million eggs in my life, especially during those lean-wallet college days, and I had my method down pat. All I would have to do is cut that time down by maybe a minute or two and I would have a perfectly soft-boiled egg, right?

The chef handed me an egg; it was ice cold, smaller than I was used to, soft blue, and covered in sandpapery speckles. “This just came out of the hen about an hour ago,” he told me without seeming very impressed about it, and walked out of the kitchen. I did what I knew how to do. I put the egg in a small saucepan, I covered it in cold water, I brought it up to a boil and kept it there for five minutes—two minutes less than I would have for a hard-boiled egg. Afterward, I dunked it in ice water and kept it there until I felt confident that it was cool enough to peel and carried it carefully to the office, rolling and clinking against the white china bowl with each step.

Without glancing at it the chef grabbed the egg and gently tapped it against the corner of his desk, then he turned it over and rolled it along his desk, pressing it down gently with the heel of his flat, meaty palm. I felt oddly sorry for the egg then, its speckled blue shell crackling so violently in that clean and silent office. He turned the egg in his cupped hand and, with a raw, chewed-up fingernail, attempted to peel it. The first blue shard tore away and with it came a chunk of white so enormous that I could see the bright orange yolk within, bulging and straining to ooze out. “Nope,” he said, and I took that as my cue to gather my things and leave.

Up until that day, boiling an egg was, in my mind, something done carelessly, out of desperation when my stomach was grumbling and there was nothing in my fridge. In the world of professional cooking, though, it’s as telling a sign of your kitchen skills as how evenly diced and unbruised your chives are. Any chef you ask will have her own precise method of soft-boiling an egg, and believe me, it will be the only and the best way. It turns out that Mr. Woodhouse was right, there are a million things to understand when it comes to perfectly soft-boiling an egg. The temperature of the egg before going into the water has to be considered, as does the age of the egg (the chef giving me an hour-old, very cold egg already put two strikes against me, which, in hindsight, was certainly part of the test). Weight, time, pot size, water amount—let’s stop here before this sounds impossible, because, really, it’s very easy. My favorite soft-boiled egg is a six-minute egg—it’s as simple as that.

EMMA

Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg

Serves 2

1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning

2 large eggs, at room temperature (the older the better, in terms of ease of peeling)

Cracked black pepper

Pour 3 inches of water into a 2-quart saucepan and add the salt. Cover and heat over medium-high heat.

While the water is coming up to a boil, prepare an ice bath by filling a small bowl with ice cubes and cold water, and set it aside.

Hold each egg firmly and, using a thumbtack or a needle, carefully prick a small hole in the bottom of the egg (it’s easier than it sounds!).

Once the water has come to a rolling boil, gently lower the eggs into the boiling water using a slotted spoon, and immediately set a timer for 6 minutes.

After 6 minutes, remove the eggs from the water with the slotted spoon and submerge them in the ice bath until they are cooled, about 5 minutes. Once they are cooled, peel them under cold running water.

Split them in half and season them with salt and black pepper to taste.