I don't understand - why would the type of cooktop make a difference to boiling an egg? The boiling water will be at 100° whether it's heated by induction, coil top, gas, etc.
If you have a nice pot of boiling water at 100°, and you add a bunch of cold eggs, the water temperature dips down to 70° and takes a really long time to climb back up.
Since the dip depends on the power of the cooker and the number of eggs added, it makes a universal rule about how many minutes to cook an egg to perfection hard.
You don't need the water going at a violent roll or anything, just when you see big bubbles going bottom to top is fine. You lower the eggs in with a spoon. There's no danger.
I'm not impressed by the "study's" conclusion; I mentioned in another comment, if you use the right technique, any egg will peel easily - https://youtube.com/watch?v=TmWPxDHSNWk
The difference in boiling time with induction is shocking.
You're also likely to crack those eggs from the thermal stress. Standard American Frontier Cooking Tradition demands that cold eggs go in cold water and come to a temperature along with the water. Turn heat down to a simmer just as it reaches boiling. Five minutes for a standard soft boil, ten for hard boiled. Then place under running cold water to cool for 5 minutes before peeling (which you should do immediately, don't let the egg sit in its shell, it is much easier and cleaner to get it out now).
Works every time. Even on induction ranges, which I've been using for 11 years now. Frankly I don't know what the author of the linked article is complaining about.
If you have fresh eggs, boil them with some baking soda in the water.
For hard boiled just put cold eggs in cold water and boil them. When it boils, shut off the heat. When you can stick you hand in the water and pull them out they're done.
Recipes are better when they can actually be followed and get consistent results.
Look, you can reject Received Wisdom and do your own thing in the interests of rigor, or you can cook the way your grandmother did. We all know which produces better food.
Of course stoves are different. But trying to normalize things as an a priori goal (in this case by dropping cold eggs into boiling water!) only makes things worse. Traditional recipes are traditional precisely because they're tolerant of situational slop and occasional misinterpretation.
Hypothetical grandmother cooks well because she perfected the technique over a few decades.
That's great and all, but recipes are communication, and if they can't communicate _how_ to achieve grandmother results to a new person, then what in the hell is the point?
It'd be better off if the recipe just said "figure it out" then, instead of trying to imply certainty where none can exist due to stove differences.
> Of course stoves are different. But trying to normalize things as an a priori goal (in this case by dropping cold eggs into boiling water!) only makes things worse. Traditional recipes are traditional precisely because they're tolerant of situational slop and occasional misinterpretation.
Except this supposed recipe isn't tolerant of anything. Eggs are still over or under done based on a minute here or there, and which way is a guessing game without the context of which exact stove.
If that were the best possible, then fine, but there's other recipes that are actually repeatable in this comment page, so what's the benefit of the grandmother recipe again?