These eggs have been done to death – although I had a pleasent duck egg version at Cafe Vue at 401 St Kilda st last week. That cafe is really good. $45 3 course lunch like the good old days at Vue de Monde. The patisserie is a killer at $4.50 each. I think I heard a cake at Lindt Cafe cost $10-15??

Different people will have variations on the temperature and cookings times. My brother goes for slowly taking a large pot of water to 68 C, then turning the heat off then letting the eggs just sit there until the water cools down. Thomas Keller’s Under Pressure book likes 75 min on 62.5 C. but of course, unless you have a immersion circulator, it’s unlikely you are going to achieve this at home. I used to use a milk-steaming pitcher thermometer and taking my eggs to roughly 65 C and trying to turn on and off the heat to maintain the temperature for 15-30 min. Now that I have a digital thermometer, I did achieve a time of around 45min-1 hr at 62-63 C. What ever your method. The larger your pot, the easier to maintain a stable temperature. Put a plate on the botton of the pot to keep the eggs from direct contact to the pan.

The aim? Harold McGee wrote that egg white sets at 63 C and yolk at 65 C. Cooking the egs all the way through at this temperature makes the whole egg set into custard like consistency. Not liquid or runny. You can crack the egg and it almost flows out into a poached egg shape.

I tried to put some tea flavour in.. and failed. Without cracking the eggs, the tea was just afraid to duck into the egg.