Ten Songs To Boil An Egg To

In the midst of Christmas party season, the most important meal of the day becomes even more so. In celebration, we asked Seb Emina, author and breakfast aficionado (check out his breakfast blog here), to turn his expertise towards a suitable soundtrack.

It’s an under-exploited coincidence that the range of lengths available to a radio-friendly pop song (3 – 6 minutes) is identical to the range of suitable cooking times for a soft-boiled egg. In my book (which is about breakfast, not music) I included a playlist of classic pop songs – “Listen to Your Heart” by Roxette, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones – each of which has ideal egg-boiling duration. It’s the chapter that gets talked about the most.

I think it would be great if artists adopted more practical considerations when deciding how long their songs should be, even their albums. Round of Boggle songs would be short and sharp. Albums for roasting a turkey would be epic voyages with little basting interludes.

Okay I’m not entirely serious, but I’ve been thinking for a long time it’d be fun to turn Songs To Boil An Egg To into a Spotify playlist and have finally gotten round to doing it. Each of the tracks on this playlist will work for a large egg as long as it’s room temperature (not fridge temperature) when lowered into the pan of boiling water. You may wish to set the scene for an emotional and windswept breakfast with “Wuthering Heights”, or a nihilistic one with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. (NB Don’t time the toast with some different music as it will sound like a mess).

Seb Emina is co-author of The Breakfast Bible, published by Bloomsbury.