Yesterday, my daughter-in-law and I went grocery shopping together. They have a family of six, and we have just two in our household, so I dropped her off at the grocery store, ran an errand, returned, completed my shopping, and put my groceries into the car before she was ready at the checkout. As I helped to bag her groceries, I noted that she had bought eggs. I had also bought a dozen eggs. The clerks at the store probably didn’t think much of it, but I noted the purchases because both households rarely purchase eggs. They raise chickens, and both families get our eggs from the farm. There are eggs to spare, which are given to friends and donated to a local food bank. This winter, however, there have been fewer eggs. An attack by two dogs resulted in the loss of most of their flock last year, and the current flock is made up of young birds raised from chicks since the attack. They only get three or four eggs daily at the farm during the cold weather. That isn’t enough for their family, so we have been buying our eggs at the store, and they have also had to purchase them.

The avian flu outbreak has resulted in high prices and low inventory of eggs across the region. At the store, eggs ranged from $2.99 to $8.99 a dozen. Some cartons with only a half-dozen eggs sold for $5.99. That’s a dollar an egg!

The shopping trip got me thinking about how many eggs we have purchased and consumed over the years. The year we were married, I had been living in a dormitory and eating at the college food service. Between the end of the semester and our wedding, I lived in our first apartment alone and without the wedding gifts that would soon stock our kitchen with pots, pans, dishes, and silverware. I had a single pot and a stack of paper plates and cooked my breakfast daily with two boiled eggs. I knew little about cooking but could boil water and produce cooked eggs. I don’t like it when the eggs are undercooked and the whites are runny, so I left them in the boiling water for ten minutes. Then I peeled them and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

I know a lot more about cooking eggs these days. I can fry, poach, scramble, and bake eggs. I can make omelets, breakfast burritos, and eggs in the hole. I use them in batters and bread and a lot of baking recipes. I know the sous vide technique, where an egg is placed in a 150F water bath for an hour, but I’ve never done it. Sous vide produces eggs with runny whites. I repeatedly tell the story of my grandmother asking everyone how they wanted their eggs prepared and serving them all cooked the same way at the same time.

Pellegrino Musto, a scientist at Italy’s National Research Council in Pozzuoli, recently published a paper with the recipe for cooking the perfect boiled egg. The paper claims that using computers to calculate how liquids and gasses flow according to the laws of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, they come up with eggs cooked just right with firm whites and soft, creamy yokes. They used Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and High-resolution Mass Spectrometry and chemical analysis of the boiled eggs to determine that eggs cooked according to their technique retain more polyphenols that give them antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Here are their instructions for the perfect way to boil an egg. Have a pot of boiling water and another vessel with water that is precisely 86F. While maintaining exact temperatures in both containers, start by placing the egg in the boiling water. Transfer it to the lukewarm water after precisely two minutes. Then, in two minutes, put it back in the boiling water. Continue the process for a total duration of 32 minutes for a perfectly boiled egg. The technique is required because, according to the scientists, the yoke needs to be cooked to 149F while the white needs to be cooked to 185F.

The method developed by the Italian scientists has been dubbed periodical cooking. While the technique has been published in a scientific journal, it will not likely be included in many cookbooks. Furthermore, I know a bit of science that might cause a problem with folks trying to cook eggs with periodical cooking. In our marriage, we have lived at an elevation of over 7,000 feet in the mountains, and now at just a few feet above sea level. The temperature at which water boils varies widely by elevation. All boiled foods cook faster here than they do at higher elevations. As far as I know, the scientists’ paper does not consider altitude. I’m sure that alternating the water bath for the eggs for exactly two minutes at each temperature only produces the exact result at the precise altitude. The paper doesn’t report the elevation of the research.

Without that critical information, I could not replicate their results even if I invested 32 minutes in boiling an egg. It would be disappointing to put in all that effort and end up with a dry and crumbly yoke, a runny white, or worse yet, both.

I might poach my egg this morning if I want to be fancy, but I’ll probably fry it instead. I can break the yoke, fry the egg hard, then serve it on toast with avocado and drizzle a balsamic vinegar reduction over it for a gourmet meal in less than half the time it takes to make a perfect boiled egg.

When it comes to cooking, perfection is not one of the things I achieve. I fall short of perfection in a lot of endeavors. My friend Ward, a good carpenter, advised me to ignore the eighths and sixteenths on the tape measure when framing a house. “You’re building a house, not a china cabinet.” A joyful life requires accepting a bit of imperfection.