Electric heating – Microwave heating – Cookware
Patent
1992-12-14
1994-03-08
Leung, Philip H.
Electric heating
Microwave heating
Cookware
219734, 99DIG14, 99440, 220506, H05B 680
Patent
active
052930211
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a utensil for use in poaching eggs in a microwave oven.
The desirability of utilising the speed and convenience of a microwave oven to produce cooked eggs which have been poached or otherwise cooked to approximate the appearance, taste and texture of a poached egg, has been recognised for some time.
Prior utensils proposed for this purpose have generally recommended the addition of a small quantity of water with the egg to be cooked. The container for the egg to be cooked has been formed of microwave compatible material and has had a flat or concave base. In some of the prior art utensils, no particular thought appears to have been given, or design parameters used, to adapt conventional egg poaching containers for microwave cooking.
One prior specification which does purport to have been specifically designed for microwave cooking is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,487. In this specification the egg compartment is sized and shaped so as to arrange an egg white thinly around the yolk of an egg. This disposition of the white relative to the yolk is, we assume, intended to compensate for the observed fact that the yolk absorbs more energy and thus heats more quickly than the surrounding egg white. The container is thus designed to spread the egg white more thinly than the egg yolk so that the relatively greater exposure of the white to the microwave energy will compensate for the greater energy absorption of the yolk.
We have found however that egg poaching utensils having a concave base to the egg compartment as suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,487, still tend to produce cooked eggs in which the yolk is set before the white of the egg. Due to the concave shape of the container there is effectively no white around a substantial portion (the bottom) of the egg yolk, thus presenting the yolk directly to the microwaves. Accordingly the yolk still sets considerably earlier than the white. Consequently, eggs cooked in such utensils until the majority of the egg white has set have yolk portions which, to the taste of many people, are overcooked.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved egg poaching utensil which enables the user to produce a microwave cooked egg having both yolk and white of the desired consistency.
We have now found that if the egg yolk can be centralised in the base of the egg container, and the container formed so that substantially all the microwave energy which first enters the yolk after passage through the egg white will previously have passed through the sides or base of the container, the cooking of the yolk can be delayed relative to the cooking of the egg white.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a utensil for microwave cooking of eggs which includes at least one container body of microwave transmisible material forming a single compartment and including a side wall merging with a base for the container body, said side wall being of sufficient height to restrain and mould a single shelled egg, the base including a centrally located yolk retention portion and forming with the side wall a white retention portion, at least part of the base being adapted to support the utensil by resting on a flat surface, characterised in that the form and relative disposition of the base and side wall are such that substantially all microwave radiation which in use first enters the yolk of an egg in the container body after passage through the egg white will previously have passed through the side wall or base. A utensil made in accordance with the present invention for microwave cooking of eggs in which the utensil includes at least one container body forming a single compartment which is of such a size to hold one shelled egg only. The container body includes at least one side wall which may be a single continuous wall or a plurality of adjacent merging walls. Preferably a single continuous substantially circular wall is provided. The side wall or walls merge with a base for the container body. The side wall and base may merge in a continuous smo
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Leung Philip H.
Tasman Manor Pty. Ltd.
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