Egg timer
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An egg timer is a device whose primary purpose is to measure the set amount of time necessary to boil an egg. Some designs may permit adjustment to measure most other cookery tasks.
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[edit] Technology
Traditionally these have been made as small sandglasses and the name has come to be synonymous with this form. Later mechanical countdown timers were introduced which had an adjustable dial and could be applied to a wide range of timed cooking tasks. Most recently digital timers have also been manufactured and a wide selection of software is available to perfom this task on a computer.
The sandglass was invented at some time during the 14th century in medieval Europe. The first reliable pictorial representation dates from AD 1338, whilst the earliest written records come from the same period and appear in lists of ships stores. From the 15th century onwards they were being used in a wide range of applications at sea, in the church , in industry and in cookery. They were the first dependable, reusable and reasonably accurate measure of time. The rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the upper reservoir, and the instrument is not liable to freeze.
[edit] Egg boiling
The set time is usually three minutes, that being the approximate time it takes to cook an average sized hen's egg. Hard boiled eggs take longer to cook. The three minute egg timer is for soft-boiled eggs. The egg changes rapidly during the first few minutes of cooking. The changes cannot be seen through the eggshell. Therefore timing is critical. Soft boiled eggs which are cooked for too short a time or for too long may not be to the recipient's liking. Soft-boiled eggs are not recommended for people who may be susceptible to salmonella, such as the old, the infirm, or pregnant women or those who suffer from diabetes.
[edit] Web-based Egg Timers
In Firefox, you can use the eggon extension as an egg timer which measures Soft, Medium, and Hard eggs.
[edit] References
- Sundials on the internet Pamphlet on the Leicester Time Trail, by Dr A. A. Mills, Millennium Fellow, Dept of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester. See section on the sandglass. Accessed January 2007
- Mechanics of the sandglass, A A Mills, S Day and S Parkes 1996 Eur. J. Phys. 17 97-109 doi:10.1088/0143-0807/17/3/001 (Available here subscription)
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