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.

If the ideal boiled egg has a meltingly soft centre and firm white, scientists have developed what they say is the perfect method. Alas, it takes 32 minutes.

A new study reveals a technique called "periodic cooking" that balances yolk and white to perfection. The only catch? It’s a bit of a time commitment.

The team used computer models of computational fluid dynamics, then tested out the painstaking—yet reportedly delicious—recipe for themselves