An Interesting Development

This is a saucepan seen from above: a pale, foamy mixture with two bright egg yolks just dropped into the center. I gave nothing away in the caption.

I posted it in early April 2017, between the pies and the cookies, as a teaser for whatever came next. Yolks going into a warm, buttery mixture is the first move in a lot of pastry's foundations: curds, custards and enriched doughs. The key in all of them is the same. Yolks begin to set at around 65°C (150°F), so you stir them in off the heat or temper them with a little of the warm liquid first, and they thicken smoothly instead of scrambling.