Hard-boiling, soft-boiling or using a trendy sous vide—no matter the approach, cooking a whole egg preserves either the texture of the yolk or the white but rarely both. Now scientists think they have cracked the perfectly cooked egg.

The perfect boiled egg has a velvety yolk paired with a soft, solid white. Achieving this balance can be a challenge because the yolk cooks at a lower temperature than the white. Hard boiling an egg can yield a chalky yolk, while cooking low and slow can produce jelly-like, undercooked whites.