Egg cooking time / temperatures

[ShitSlippers]

Ds passed a baked egg challenge earlier this year, and now eats cake baked for at least 20 minutes at anything from about 180 degrees upwards. I have been advised by the hospital to introduce less well-cooked egg at home.

The advice was to go straight to something like pancakes, but i'm a bit of a wuss and didn't want to go straight to something so lightly cooked - all the recipes I have found give a cooking time of less than 10 mins - so I've baked some scones which only needed 12 mins. This seems a good halfway point to me, and if he's okay with these I'll brave the pancakes! It occurs to me though, that because the scones were cooked at about 210 degrees they may still be too well-cooked to be much different to what ds is already eating.

Has anyone been given a definitive answer by their hospital as to what constitutes well-cooked, less well-cooked, etc? Our specialist was really evasive and I asked several times very clearly whether it was down to cooking time or temp or both, and what was an approximate cut-off point. She wouldn't give a straight answer at all, and then I was told by one allergy nurse that it was time that was important and by another that it was temperature!

I have called the hospital and asked to speak to someone to clarify some of this, but as always they're really busy and I will probably wait several days before someone has the time to call me back. In the meantime, I thought I'd see if any of you could help! TIA for any info you can give

Thanks BabyBarrister, that is strange! Last time he was tested, ds had a 5mm skin prick to raw egg, and had the baked egg challenge on the basis of that. The previous spt was 14mm iirc, but the bloods came in at something like 0.79 Tbh, I think the hospital are keen to just push as much as they can towards us, and as there is no history of asthma and his only other positive is a 'maybe' to one tree nut, they're happy for us to test at home. That doesn't stop me being a wimp about it though! I like your idea of pancakes in the car park!!

By the way, he's eaten a scone this morning with no reaction, but I don't know if this is a good thing or not!

Yes I'm inclined to agree with you. The cooking time may be much shorter than he's used to, but still a high temp. Will go with the pancakes next week. I reckon the hardest bit will be getting him to eat stone-cold pancake - not very appetising! Will have to get the syrup out...

I'm afraid I don't know either but following with interest as my DS is in a similar situation in that he passed a baked egg challenge last year and has been happily eating bread and cakes with egg in ever since but I've no idea what the next stage will be. He doesn't have skin prick tests as he reacts too badly to them (he has multiple allergies) but his blood test result to whole egg was still extremely high. However, consultant also tested for specific protein in egg which came back low hence the baked egg challenge in hospital. I was very dubious given our previous food challenge experience but was over the moon when he passed. Might ask the consultant at next appointment in half term what the next step would be for egg re-introduction.

Hi there
My son outgrew his egg allergy but I was given zero support by his hospital and was told to just get on with it :(
However I found this article very useful especially the chart grading cooked egg from raw etc . I hope it helps you too...good luck xxx
egg link
Go to bottom of page and click egg allergy guidelines
[Smile]

Thanks for your replies. Funnily enough, I had those guidelines prior to the appt and printed out the list of foods to show to the specialist. I wanted to ask her if ds could tolerate cake, whether I could start to give him some of the foods from the 'well-cooked' list, in order to give him a bit of variety (and to get him out of the habit of constantly eating cake!) Again, she was really non-committal about it, and basically said the list is drawn up by a load of blokes sat round a table in academia somewhere, and doesn't necessarily have any bearing on real life

I know that everyone is different, and will - if they do - outgrow at different rates, tolerating different foods at different times, but I just got the feeling she was covering her back by not committing to giving me any solid advice at all!

Posted to soon - Jammygal, did you introduce foods going down the scale from baked to raw? If so, would you mind sharing what you introduced and in what order? It might be useful in shedding some light on the subject!

Thanks for the link Jammygal that's really useful. Mind you, looking at that list makes me realise how difficult the next stage will be given the added complication of DS's milk and wheat allergies - there's not much on the list that's going to be suitable! Oh well, we're quite happy where we are at the moment so I'm really not keen to move to the next stage just yet anyway .

Hello again, glad you are finding that list helpful- I certainly did! Well as I was given zero help from hosp I went at it alone and created my own reintroduction programme :)
This is just my sons journey and I am not advocating reintroduction without guidance from hospital/ gp etc I used the cooked egg list as a rough guide, plus a bit of what I have read about the reintroduction of peanuts in addenbrookes trial, plus a bit of common sense.
I decided to start with cooked pasteurised egg in processed form and in small quantities. So I started by giving Jaffa cake.I was constantly looking for an side effects etc.I gradually built up the quantity when I realised my son was tolerating well...?so it went something like this.....

Day one ...an eighth of a Jaffa cake
Day two nothing
Day three an eighth
Day four nothing
Day five an eighth
Day six an eighth
Day seven an eighth
Week two a quarter
Week three a half
Week four three quarters
Week five a whole Jaffa cake
I then progressed on to fab baking boys muffins and did the same introducing a small amount at a time.
After another month of fab baking boys I progressed onto home cooked biscuits and cake. I looked for recipes where there was a low ratio of egg to cake eg 1 egg shared between 16 cakes etc
I also cooked them for a longer time than normal so they were very crisp but still edible!
From there I gradually built up the amount of eggs in cakes and gradually cooked them for less time.

I then worked through the well cooked egg list progressing onto things like Yorkshire puds , pancakes etc but again would make sure everything was very well cooked.At first I would cook pancakes in a pan and then bake them in the oven a bit longer to ensure they were very well cooked!
I then progressed onto the middle section of lightly cooked egg. I always kept in my mind that the egg white is more allergenic than the yolk so placed things like meringues near to the bottom of the list.
When I came to the reintroduction of pure egg eg scrambled, boiled , fried egg etc I started with scrambled mixed it with lots of milk and literally rubberised it go ensure it was cooked! Then really ensured hard boiled eggs were hard etc
Even now my son hasn't had any raw egg products as I really don't feel it is necessary. Our lives have come such a long way on the egg road I don't see what the point is of jeopardising it for the sake of an uncooked mousse etc although having said that he has had the odd lick of a raw cake mix...something that sent him into huge itching hives and red face when he was two! He is now 8 BTW and started egg reintroduction three years ago :)

Thanks Jammygal, I hadn't thought of Jaffa Cakes being okay - I love them! Ironically, once I had psyched myself up to the thought of doing the pancakes ds came down with a cold, accomopanied by viral hive-type rash, so I've had to put the brakes on for now. We'll see how he is next week and perhaps try then.

Glad it might be some help shitslippers. I still avoid very egg rich cakes too as don't really see the point of taking it to the edge iyswim! Good luck and keep us posted x

whispers with crossed fingers my DS has almost outgrown his egg allergy.

Tolerated baked egg in cakes (was intermittent at first)
Was then told to try (in this order)
Yorkshire pudding (frozen)
Yorkshire pudding (fresh)
Quiche
Pancakes
Hard boiled egg

He can now tolerated a fried egg cooked until there aren't any wet bits left.

Very similar to Jammygal in list of things to try and this happened fairly quickly over six months or so. With the hard boiled egg we didn't boil it hard tough initially and he had a rash, so we did a short stint of nuking it in the microwave after boiling to really zap those proteins.