Imagine, you are a housewife living in the 1960s. You have a busy life, what with looking after the household and the children, and sadly, this week it has been worse than usual. The children have all been sick, one after another, and you have had your work cut out caring for them. Your trusty egg coddler has had its work cut out too - one of the few things the children have been able to stomach is a soft egg!
When I showed the children this old egg coddler, they had absolutely no idea what it could be. Today, there are so many modern appliances designed to cook eggs in whatever way you desire, but this old fashioned egg coddler was completely foreign to them. Indeed, the children did not even know what a coddled egg was!
A coddled egg is essentially a lightly cooked egg. Strictly speaking, many will say a coddled egg must be cooked a coddling dish, like the one I showed the children, but food historians disagree. In fact, strictly speaking, a coddled egg is any egg which has a barely solid outer white and warm, but not set yolk - so very soft boiled eggs certainly qualify. Yet today, coddled eggs, or at least eggs described as coddled, are relatively rare, and possibly most often used in dressings like Caesar Salad Dressing, where the egg is slightly cooked to create a thicker dressing (and reduce the possible dangers of a raw egg). Just like eggs themselves though, some sort of coddled egg has probably been eaten since the beginning of human history! Certainly in Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Ancient Rome, soft cooked eggs were well known.
By the Medieval period, there was probably no food eaten more often than the humble egg, other than perhaps bread. Both were relatively cheap and commonly available and the combination of the two created a satisfactory meal complete with carbohydrate and protein. Of course, there were many different ways in which eggs could be prepared, from frying to roasting, but throughout history, right up until very recently, soft cooked eggs were the preferred type. In fact, they were believed to be easier to digest. This perceived ease of digestion is probably why coddling dishes were first created. Coddling dishes became common in the 1890s, and were possibly first created by Royal Worcester. Today, many people prefer their eggs cooked beyond the very soft or coddled stage, often because of the fear of salmonella which can live in the yolk.