M&S’s pre-poached egg is convenience food at its laziest
‘Laziest food item’ is a competitive field. Pre-cooked rice, ready-peeled potatoes, grated cheese, chopped ginger, carrot batons: all once looked like the idlest thing since sliced bread, but are now merely an accepted starting point for home cooking.
The crowded arena has recently welcomed a grotesque new competitor: the pre-poached egg. These unholy artefacts – just pop in the microwave – have started appearing in M&S, sold as a two-pack of ‘perfectly poached’ free-range eggs, priced at £2. Given that Marks sells half a dozen unpoached free-range eggs for £1.30, or 22p per egg, that means it’s banking on the customer paying five times as much for an egg that has been simmered to rubbery perfection. A hefty markup for water and heat.
One’s first instinct is ridicule. Who are these items meant for? People hoping to serve eggs Benedict on the train? Or someone hosting a brunch without running water or a stove? People whose schedules are so precisely calibrated that they cannot carve out three minutes to poach an egg themselves?
Yet really they are the logical conclusion of every other trend in food and drink. As with those little ‘protein pots’ of cold boiled eggs and spinach, blame must fall partly on gym rats. The contemporary obsession with building muscle mass has created an apparently boundless lust for protein-rich products, to be guzzled in the aftermath of a weightlifting session. As something you might have taken on a picnic anyway, however, a boiled egg makes sense in this context. A poached egg, on the other hand, ought to be enjoyed still warm from the pan.
This is a golden age of shortcuts in the kitchen. Every time-poor home cook appreciates convenience, but there is a middle-class taboo around ready meals. The balancing act for the marketeers is finding a way for the cook to have dinner on the table in a jiffy, while letting them feel like they are a wholesome domestic god or goddess. The Cook and Charlie Bigham brands have been wildly successful in this space. Then there are the recipe box services, which deliver exactly what you need to cook, sparing you a trip to the shops. And the ‘shots’ promising gut health in one three-second gulp.
This is also the reason stir-fries are always right in front of you when you walk into the shop and why recipe books continue to promise meals that will be ready in ever-quicker windows. Jamie Oliver, Joe Wicks and Nigel Slater have all published books of 30-minute meals, but those are languid slow-cooked feasts compared to some of the alternatives.
There are plenty of books promising recipes ready in 20, 15, 10 and even five minutes. Oliver had to go down to 15 minutes just to keep in touch with the competition. Hopefully we will soon get one-minute meals or, even better, meals that will do other jobs for you – taking the bins out or replying to emails – thereby giving you back time.
The bigger surprise is not that there are pre-poached eggs, but that they took so long to arrive. They are significant because we are approaching the outer limits of convenience. A pre-made beef Wellington or curry or pie saves the chef hours of work. If you consider that the poached egg would still need to be warmed up to be enjoyable, the time-saving can be a maximum of a minute or two. And yet still convenience is king. What’s next? Pre-toasted bread? The laziness consultants at M&S will be in the lab working it out.
