ELI5: Why do egg cookers need less water to cook more eggs?

Submitted by trailing-edge t3_11dk88v in explainlikeimfive

Automatic egg cookers come with a water measuring cylinder that is marked based on how many eggs you want to cook. You pour the water into the cooker, and it heats the water until it all boils off.

The amount of water is used as a timer somehow.

The part I don’t understand is: why you use more water for 1 egg than you do for 6 eggs? That seems backwards.

7

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

therealdilbert t1_ja9aoio wrote

The cooker is done once all the water is boiled off
Since the cooker heats the combined mass of eggs and water, with more eggs it takes longer to before the water boils off, so you need less water to cook for the same time

12

thieh t1_ja93vyh wrote

The Egg cooker has a fixed volume. If you load all the eggs in the same chamber to cook, it takes less water to fill to the ideal level of water than if you only have 1 egg in the same chamber.

Egg cookers where each egg has its own chamber are not expected to have the same problem but the design is usually more expensive.

3

trailing-edge OP t1_ja94e8a wrote

The eggs don’t touch the water. They are suspended in the chamber by a plastic grid. Example: https://www.krupsusa.com/instructions-for-use/KITCHEN-APPLIANCES/EGG-COOKER-F230/csp/8000035574

1

nrron t1_ja94wci wrote

They don’t need to touch the water. That’s a sealed container. Put the eggs in with some water, boil the water and let the eggs cook in the steam.

This doesn’t work in an open container where you can’t keep the steam by the eggs

4

zhordd t1_ja9wqvo wrote

The eggs don't need to touch the water if it's a (mostly) closed system.

If you consider the entire system as a whole (water, air, eggs), more eggs means more of the heat applied to the system goes to the eggs, which means less available for the rest of the system including the water, which should cause the water to boil off at a slower rate. If the water is meant to act as a timer, then you'd need less of it corresponding with the slower boiloff rate to result in a comparable cook time.

1

manInTheWoods t1_ja98sim wrote

> If you load all the eggs in the same chamber to cook, it takes less water to fill to the ideal level of water than if you only have 1 egg in the same chamber.

If the eggs don't touch the water, the do not affect the level of water.

1

Alternative-Sock-444 t1_jaao8fc wrote

So. It makes perfect sense really. Think about an ice cold water bottle on a hot day. Picture it. Is the exterior of the bottle wet, or dry? Wet. Because when hot, damp air touches a cold, dry object, it condenses into water droplets on the object. Now imagine the bottle is your egg, and the hot summer day is the inside of the egg cooker. The steam from the boiling water in the bottom of the cooker condenses and forms water droplets on the egg. Once the droplets get big enough, gravity takes hold, pulling them down. Down, back into the bottom of the cooker, to be boiled and start the cycle again

When you have a lot of eggs filling the chamber, you have a lot of surface area for water to condense onto, which means a lot of water droplets making their way back down to the bottom. Conversely, when you have one egg, there is less cold area for water to condense onto, so most of the steam goes out of the top of the cooker, which means less droplets make it back into the water. Therefore, you need more water, since a larger percent of that water is escaping, to produce the same firmness of egg and the same cooking time as multiple eggs.

The way the timer works is a bit more technical and I haven't taken one apart yet to find out which of the two mechanisms I'm thinking of is used, so can't tell you for sure HOW it works, but I can tell you WHY it works. Water boils when heat is transferred to it, we know that much. There's a heating element under the metal bowl at the bottom of the cooker, which transfers heat through the bowl, into the water. But we can also think about it as the water cooling down the bowl, and thus the heating element, because that is also happening at the same time. As long as the water is cooler than the heating element, which it is all the way up until it turns to steam and is no longer touching the bowl, it is stealing heat from the element and keeping it at a steady temperature. Once all the water boils off, the heating element can no longer stay cool, and rapidly heats up. That's when the cooker decides to turn off and voila! Perfectly cooked eggs.

The great thing about how they work is that the whole process is very easily reproducible, allowing for perfect eggs every time as long as you put the proper amount of water into it.

Hope that helps!

2