As a mostly stay-at-home dad responsible for all the meals in our household, I depend on a supply of boiled eggs in the refrigerator — ready to be added to soups, salads, stews, sandwiches, stir-fries and tacos — as an essential part of my planning.

Years ago, in an effort to answer a perennial question — what’s the best way to boil an egg? — I hatched a plan using the only method I know: lots and lots of testing.

It was a multidecade endeavor. The series of tests I conducted variously as a kitchen monkey at Cook’s Illustrated magazine, as recipe czar at the website Serious Eats and in researching my cookbook produced good data, but none of it felt definitive. Further home experimentations (there have been weeks when my wife, Adri, begged me to stop serving egg salad for dinner) have left unanswered questions and conflicting results.

Do older eggs really peel more easily? (The internet insists they do.) Can an ice bath prevent green yolks? Is there anything the Instant Pot can’t do better? I simply did not have enough data to say for certain.