The ur-experiment

Take a fresh egg and wrap it round with this divine Pantagruelion. Thus wrapped up, put it in a brasier, as large and hot as you like. Leave it there as long as you like. At last you will take out the egg cooked, hard, and burnt, without alteration, change or over-heating of the sacred Pantagruelion. For less than fifty thousand Bordeaux crowns, reduced to the twelfth part of a mite, you may make the experiment.

— Rabelais, The Third Book of Pantagruel, chapter 52