How to Soft-Cook Eggs
Douglas Ford, sous-chef of LA’s Lucques, always uses farm-fresh eggs when he cooks, insisting that they taste different than mass-produced ones. He adds some vinegar to the boiling water (it makes the shell easier to remove later), and then cooks an average-sized egg for 8 minutes. A smaller egg only needs 7 minutes, and a larger egg, like a duck egg, needs up to 9 minutes to reach the perfect consistency.
followed these directions exactly and my eggs were closer to hard boiled than soft...
8 minutes for an average-sized egg??? This sounds like an awfully long time.
foolproof auto egg cooker
http://www.qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.detail/params.aol_refer.false.tpl.detail.msn_refer.false.item.K23953.ref.GBA
i use it all the time, perfect soft boiled eggs 100% success, no fuss, no muss.
Using this software is more precise. The site is in Norwegian, but you can figure out the tool:
http://www.kjemi.uio.no/publikum/popularkjemi/egg/
Background info on the science of boiling an egg:
http://blog.khymos.org/2009/04/09/towards-the-perfect-soft-boiled-egg/
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/
Interesting. I believe the vinegar may soften the shell.
What I wonder is whether the eggs were at room temperature or fresh out of the refrigerator? This is relevant to the cooking time, too.