Soft-Boiled Eggs with Vanilla Butter Soldiers

This is a two-ingredient breakfast that lives or dies on the butter. A soft-boiled egg, six minutes in the water, and strips of toasted baguette spread with Bordier Madagascar Vanilla Butter for dipping. The French call the bread strips mouillettes, and English calls them soldiers. The vanilla butter is what turns a plain boiled egg into something worth making on purpose. It takes about eight minutes from cold water to the table.

At a glance

Difficulty: Easy
Serves: 2
Active time: About 5 minutes
Cook: 5 to 6 minutes
Key ingredient: Bordier Madagascar Vanilla Butter

Why this works

Vanilla and egg yolk belong together, which is not a surprise once you think about crème anglaise, but almost nobody puts them together at breakfast. Bordier's Madagascar Vanilla Butter, created in 2010, is unsalted butter worked with brown sugar and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla. It reads as sweet on bread on its own. Against a warm, running yolk it reads differently: the vanilla sits behind the egg rather than on top of it, and the brown sugar picks up the toasted crust of the bread. What you get is closer to a custard note than a dessert.

The technique is entirely about the yolk. Five to six minutes in boiling water sets the white through while leaving the yolk liquid enough to coat a strip of bread. Thirty seconds past that and the yolk starts to gel at the edges, at which point the dipping stops working. The bread has to be toasted, not fresh, because a soft strip collapses on the way out of the shell. Butter it while it is still hot so the butter melts into the crumb instead of sitting on the surface.

Ingredients

Three things, and one of them is the point.

Ingredient	Metric	US
Bordier Madagascar Vanilla Butter	To taste	To taste
Eggs	2	2
Fresh baguette	1	1
Fleur de sel (optional)	A pinch	A pinch

Method

Step 1: Boil the eggs and butter the soldiers

Cook the eggs in boiling water for 5 to 6 minutes. While they cook, cut the baguette into long strips, toast them, and spread them with Bordier Madagascar Vanilla Butter. A light scatter of fleur de sel over the buttered bread is optional and worth trying at least once.

Tips from our kitchen

Lower the eggs into water that is already boiling. Starting them in cold water and bringing it up to temperature adds three or four uncontrolled minutes, which is the difference between a running yolk and a set one. Use a slotted spoon and lower them in gently so they do not crack on the base of the pan.
Five minutes for a very loose yolk, six for a thicker one. Six minutes suits a large egg straight from the fridge. If your eggs are at room temperature, or small, start checking at five. Set a timer rather than guessing.
Take the butter out first. Bordier butter is dense and cold from the fridge it will tear the toast rather than spread on it. Twenty minutes on the counter is enough. Do not soften it in the microwave, which melts the outside and leaves the core hard.
Toast the bread, do not grill it to a crisp. You want a firm strip with a dry surface, not a cracker. Over-toasted bread shatters into the egg and the whole thing turns into a mess in the shell.
Crack the top with the back of a spoon. Tap a ring around the top third and lift the cap off, rather than sawing at it with a knife. Shell fragments in the yolk are the usual failure here.
If the yolk sets, do not throw it away. An overcooked soft-boiled egg is a perfectly good jammy egg. Peel it, halve it onto the buttered bread, and add the fleur de sel.

How to serve it

This is a breakfast or a light supper, and it does not need anything else on the plate. Coffee or black tea, the eggs in cups, the soldiers stacked alongside. If you have a second flavoured butter open, put both on the table and let people compare across the same egg. For a longer weekend version of the same vanilla butter idea, our Madagascar Vanilla Butter Brioche takes the flavour into a proper bake.

Where to buy Churned Madagascar Vanilla Butter by Bordier in the US

The French Pantry ships Bordier butter across the United States in insulated overnight packaging, straight from the workshop in Brittany.

Churned Madagascar Vanilla Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): unsalted butter worked with brown sugar and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla, created in 2010 and the flavour most people try first.

For the rest of the range, including raspberry, yuzu and seaweed, browse the Maison Bordier collection.

Frequently asked questions

How much Bordier vanilla butter should I buy for this?

Bordier blocks are 4.4 oz (125 g). Two people getting through half a baguette will use roughly 30 to 40 g, so a single block covers this breakfast three or four times over. Buy one and expect it to become a habit.

Can I substitute a different butter?

Not really, and that is the honest answer. The vanilla and brown sugar are churned into the butter itself, so plain butter with vanilla extract stirred in tastes thin and slightly alcoholic. If you want to make this without the vanilla butter, use Bordier salted butter and treat it as the classic version of the dish, which is also very good.

How should I store Bordier butter?

Keep it wrapped in its paper in the coldest part of the fridge. Cut off what you need and let that come to room temperature before spreading. A block freezes well if it is wrapped tightly, though the flavoured butters are best used within a few weeks of opening.

Does Bordier butter need refrigeration?

Yes. Bordier butter is a fresh, hand-churned product and ships cold in insulated packaging. Put it in the fridge as soon as your box arrives.

Is the vanilla butter sweet enough to be a dessert butter?

It is sweeter than plain butter but it is not icing. There is enough brown sugar to read as vanilla on toast and not enough to stop it working against savoury food. People use it on brioche, on pancakes, and, as here, with eggs.

What size egg does the timing assume?

Large. If you are working with medium eggs, take a full minute off. Duck eggs need longer, closer to seven minutes, because the yolk is proportionally bigger.