Scientists say they’ve found the ideal way to cook boiled eggs to maximize consistency, taste and nutrients of the egg white and yolk. You can even test it at home.

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.

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

By carefully controlling heat flow, researchers in Italy achieved a perfectly textured egg that retains more beneficial compounds. The only trade-off? A slightly tougher peel, but for egg enthusiasts,

After cooking the egg thusly, the researchers first studied it using spectrometry and an MR-like scanner. They confirmed that both phases (yolk and white) were cooked perfectly. They also found that the eggs had more healthy antioxidants (polyphenols) than boiled eggs, though it’s not clear why.

The scientists devised a way of cooking an egg that requires no special culinary skill or fancy gadgets. It took about 300 eggs, though the researchers “didn’t eat all of them,” said Pellegrino Musto, a polymer expert at the National Research Council of Italy.

Italian scientists claim to have found the scientifically best way to make a hard-boiled egg. After trying it for ourselves, we can confirm that the egg was delicious.

The perfect boiled egg has a velvety yolk paired with a soft, solid white. Achieving this balance can be a challenge because the yolk cooks at a lower temperature than the white. Hard boiling an egg can yield a chalky yolk, while cooking low and slow can produce jelly-like, undercooked whites.