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.

There’s no single method to boil an egg, but a team at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute for Polymers, Composites, and Biomaterials now believe there is a “perfect” way to cook them. In order to make it, however, you’ll need some patience and a watchful eye.