It is an easy and rewarding task to slice a soft-boiled egg in half using a single chopping motion with a heavy sharp cleaver. However, the yolk tends to run out of at least one half onto the plate before you can stand both halves upright.
The invention herein presented consists of an anvil on which the egg is placed. It has three concave depressions in a line. The two outermost are shaped like shallow egg cups, so that half a softboiled egg will sit upright in the concavity. The central concavity is mounted higher, and is only big enough that an egg will rest stably on its side in the concavity.
When the egg is chopped, the two halves will fall under their own weight into the two outer concavities. Being under freefall, there should be minimal yolk spillage.
For those of a less machete-wielding persuasion, a spring-loaded blade could be installed on a pivot, actuated by a little lever on the side.-- pocmloc, Oct 12 2012 Diagram to accompany my 1st anno. http://www.flickr.c...5550/in/photostream [TomP, Oct 12 2012] Would it not be simpler to immerge the egg in liquid nitrogen for a few moments, cleave it cleanly with a sharp chisel, lay the halves in the correct orientation, and then rewarm the halves to serving temperature?
Perhaps not.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2012 They may be under free-fall, but aren't you also proposing that they are given a horizontal movement as well? That might leave the yolk behind.
Couldn't this be better carried out if the egg is held in a clamp that lightly pushes it together; the clamp is made of two plastic blocks with a slight hollow in the middle of each. There is enough space between the blocks for a blade to pass through. The blade used is actually made up of two blades - thus (exploded view): \||/ (extend vertically upwards with parallel sides).
This blade can now passed through the egg and stopped when the cutting edge has just passed the bottom. It is hypothesised that the due to the clamping force and the elasticity of the egg that no yolk should have yet leaked as they now press the egg onto the blade. The blade halves can now be split and rotated away from one another downwards, along with the clamping block until the sliced side of the egg facing upwards. The knife can be pivoted back to the centre and the egg can now be removed from the block without fear of yolk loss, as long as it is not tipped so far as to allow gravity to remove the yolk from the natural bowl in the egg white. I'll start drawing a diagram in case it's needed.
edit: I'm about to scan my diagram, as usual, some alterations have been made. Clamping force between egg-block halves is now provided by an elastic band and then magnets in these blocks hold the blocks to the blade halves while they are being rotated to horizontal.
I seem to have usurped this idea - is this worth putting up as a new one?-- TomP, Oct 12 2012 [bigsleep] (that's something I could do with at 1:40am...) I think that's basically what I'm thinking of. Hope my drawing clarifies what I'm thinking of (coming soon to a link near you). Are you both refering to the flatter side of the egg as the 'end' though? I've always thought of that as the side. Or do you mean to cut the egg across the smaller diameter direction? I'm going for longditudinal since that was my interpretation of [pomloc's] scheme.-- TomP, Oct 12 2012 spring loaded guillotine [+]-- Voice, Oct 13 2012 The biggest issue is that all eggs are slightly different in their profiles around each axis, so there will seldom be a perfect fit.-- xenzag, Oct 13 2012 I suggest making use of centrifigal force by have the whole apparatus spinning during the slicing.-- AusCan531, Oct 13 2012 Yes, [AusCan], that is great.
Trouble is, you would need a large enough spinning platform for the cleaver-wielding chef to stand on as well.
Thanks [Tom] for your excellent ideas and drawings. However I find the idea of the blade pressing on the yokl somehow inelegent if not slightly squeamish. I have to report that my results of un-mechanised softboiledegg slicing usually result in no yolk at all on the blade, but serious yolk loss from one half of the sliced egg.
Also I would prefer transverse slicing since that is the smallest cross section. Freehand cleaver use means that a greater error margin in lateral aim is a good thing.-- pocmloc, Oct 13 2012 I meant to mention at the beginning that the entire process is to be conducted shell-on.-- pocmloc, Feb 25 2014 random, halfbakery