I like eggs. I usually have them double fried and use a fork to pierce the yolk when it’s being cooked. But I have friends and family who baulk at the thought of the yolk being so badly treated. Just for them, I once had long conversations with quite a few of my chef friends on how to cook the perfect fried egg — sunny side up, runny and intact.

It’s easier to make fried — or even poached — eggs now that you have all these smart gadgets such as silicon cups that you crack an egg in. But I enjoy reading about old-fashioned ways of cooking eggs.

And that is why, when I picked up this book called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by an Iranian chef called Samin Nosrat, I lingered over the egg recipes.

Be patient

The book (and a Netflix series) looks at these four basic factors “that determine how good your food will taste”. Salt, it says, enhances flavour; fat amplifies flavour and makes appealing textures possible; acid brightens and balances; and heat ultimately determines the texture of food.

You need to balance out these four elements to make the best egg dishes, the chef tells us. Take scrambled eggs. “Cook scrambled eggs too long, or at too high a temperature, and they will dry out,” she writes. “ ...to get the silkiest scrambled eggs, follow Alice B. Toklas’s advice and cook them over very low heat. I imagine she learned a thing or two about good cooking from her adopted home town — Paris — where she was a member of the 20th-century avant-garde.” Toklas, who was Gertrude Stein’s companion for 40 years, wrote some seminal cookbooks too.

Nosrat goes on to tell us how eggs should be scrambled: “Crack four eggs in a bowl and season them with salt and a few drops of lemon juice, whisking thoroughly to break them up. Gently melt a little butter in a sauce-pan over the lowest possible heat and pour in the eggs. Continue to stir with a whisk or a fork, while adding four or more tablespoons of butter in thumb-sized pieces, letting each be absorbed before you add the next. Never stop stirring, and be patient. It will take several minutes for the eggs to start to come together. When they do, pull them from the stove in anticipation of the cooking that will continue due to residual heat. Serve with — what else? — buttered toast.”

For the perfectly boiled egg, the chef suggests that you boil an egg for 10 minutes if you like the yolk hard — just right for egg salads, for instance — or for eight minutes if you want the yolk to be a glossy yellow.

My chef friends had given me sound advice on the perfectly fried egg, sunny side up. Lightly oil the pan. Don’t use butter, for it tends to foam. Firmly tap the egg to break it — it will then fall smoothly into the pan. Hold the egg very close to the pan when you break it. Cook on low heat. The fried egg is just right when the white firms up but the glorious yolk is still runny.

Eggs this good will disappear from the plate even before you can mop up the yellow with crusty bread. I suppose that’s what the Nobel Laureate meant when he sang, “It’s all ova now, baby blue…”

The writer likes reading and writing about food as much as he does cooking and eating it. Well, almost.