Mollet and Hard-Cooked Eggs

Another kind of egg, cooked in the shell, is the 6-minute, or “mollet,” egg; mollet in Old French means softish. Mollet eggs can replace poached eggs in various dishes and were often used in the famous eggs in aspic so dear to the French and to which I stopped being partial after canned bouillon or powdered jelly replaced the very sapid homemade veal stock aspic of my young days.

So that mollet eggs all cook for the same length of time, place them in a frying basket and lower them into the boiling water all together. Simmer for exactly 6 minutes. Remove the basket from the hot water and immerse it immediately in cold water. The contact with the cold water produces a layer of steam between egg and shell, which makes peeling easy.