Eggs: A Miscellany

Updated: Nov 1

Since it’s springtime and I live out in Pennsylvania Farming Country where these things are plentiful...

It’s going to be a while until a new major essay (there’s a couple in the hopper right now but they require a little more reading on before I can write semi-intelligently about them), so here’s the first miscellany for this blog.

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“Eggs are what humans have in common” – editors of Lucky Peach, All About Eggs

In biology, eggs specifically refer to “an animal reproductive body consisting of an ovum together with its nutritive and protective envelopes and having the capacity to develop into a new individual capable of independent existence” (Merriam-Webster). Everything below is going to refer to its key culinary reference, the chicken egg. If you want a definition for that, Merriam-Webster has you covered there too: “the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird and especially by the common domestic chicken.” Of course that doesn’t mention the fact humans also often eat fish eggs (officially “roe”) and, occasionally, reptile and amphibian eggs.

Some fun tidbits about egg consumption by humans, courtesy of the folks at Wikipedia:

Chicken eggs are the most common bird eggs eaten, followed by duck, goose, and quail eggs. Ostrich eggs are occasionally eaten as delicacies, while eggs from gulls and guineafowl can be found eaten where available (Northern Europe and Africa, respectively).
59% of the world’s production of eggs can be attributed to Asia. In 2017, world production of eggs was about 80.1 million tonnes (or roughly 80.1 billion kilograms or 1.7611 pounds).
Chickens were most likely domesticated for egg production in the Indus Valley around 7500 BCE, (somewhat) answering the question “Which came first?...”
Ancient Greeks mostly ate quail eggs until around 800 BCE, when chickens were introduced from Mesopotamia.
Ancient Romans often started their meals with an egg course and would crush egg shells under their plates to ward off evil spirits.
Eggs were forbidden during Lent during the Middle Ages since they were seen as opulent, though this may have been due to grain shortage issues when feeding hens.
The egg carton was invented in 1911 by Joseph Coyle to resolve a dispute between an egg farmer and a hotel client in British Columbia concerning broken eggs.
Double-yolk eggs (a common egg found around here in Pennsylvania) are normally a product of faster-than-average ovulation in the hen…

(If you want to read more egg facts, Eat This, Not That! has a listicle for that particular itch.)

According to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, these are the major parts of a common chicken egg:

Shell: A porous membrane that contains up to 17,000 tiny pores and is made entirely of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). The thin outermost coating is known as a bloom or a cuticle.
Membranes: 2 transparent protein membranes (inner and outer) protecting the yolk and albumen.
Air cell: Space that allows egg to cool and contract when laid and grows as the egg ages.
Albumen (aka "egg white"): 4 layers containing 40 kinds of proteins.
Chalazae: The "strands" connecting the yolk to the albumen.
Vitelline membrane: The clear case covering the yolk.
Yolk: The yellow center of the egg, where most of the nutrients reside. What nutrients, you ask? How about iron, vitamins A & D, calcium, phosphorous, etc. Also changes from yellow to orange depending on what type of hen is laying the egg and its feed.

In the United States, egg sizes are categorized as the following standards according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA):

Info pulled from the Wikipedia entry on egg sizes

When buying eggs, one of the biggest problems is making sure your eggs are a) not cracked anywhere and b) are as fresh as possible. Mark Bittman, in How to Cook Everything, outlines 4 ways to tell if the eggs you bought are fresh:

The whites are thick and don’t spread out much.
The whites are a bit cloudy; this means that the naturally occurring carbon dioxide hasn’t had time to fully escape from the egg after hatching.
The yolk is firm and stands tall.
The chalazae (the coiled cordlike attachments to the yolk) are prominent.

Now if you’re confused about the labels on the cartons, Bittman explains that in detail too but that might be too much for here. If you want to learn more about those, check out this guide provided by Cook’s Illustrated.

Here are how eggs and their parts translate into other languages: (the m, f, and n indicate gender of the noun):

Info pulled from Wiktionary (save for the “depends on context”, which I tried looking up and got thoroughly confused)

“I have had, in my time, memorable meals of scrambled eggs with fresh truffles, scrambled eggs with caviar and other glamorous things, but to me, there are few things as magnificent as scrambled eggs, pure and simple, perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned.” - James Beard, 'On Food' (1974)

If you like scrambling eggs – which most of us learn at some point as kids – here’s some tips provided by the book Breakfast: The Most Important Book about the Best Meal of the Day1 on how to make them even better:

Season eggs when beaten, not raw. This helps with making sure the seasoning is uniform throughout the eggs.
Start with a cold pan, with a little butter or grease. This is supposed to make the cook time more even and prevents prematurely burning off a chunk of your eggs.
If using the same pan, cook your bacon/”fat” (like butter) first. Don’t wipe it out, just let it cool – it adds flavor and prevents premature sticking.
Take the pan off the burner a minute before you suspect the eggs are done. The eggs will keep cooking in the pan but the cool-down with keep them from burning or getting rubbery.
Add a splash of lemon to the egg, either before or during cooking. It adds a light sourness that emphasizes the egg’s flavor. I’ve also found that goat cheese or sour cream blended in with the beaten eggs does this as well.

“Eggs have two advantages over all other foods. First, they are procurable nearly everywhere; second, the most dainty person is sure when eating eggs that they have not been handled.” - ‘A Book for A Cook’, The Pillsbury Co. (1905)

Fine Cooking Test Kitchen, in their book How to Squeeze a Lemon, provide a good guide on egg substitutions:

In place of 4 large eggs, use 4 extra large eggs or 5 medium eggs.
In place of 5 large eggs, use 4 extra large eggs or 6 medium eggs.
In place of 6 large eggs, use 5 extra large eggs or 7 medium eggs.

They note the following size breakdowns, similar to the chart provided above from the USDA regulations:

1 extra-large egg = 4 Tbs. (2 2⁄3 Tbs. white and 11⁄3 Tbs. yolk)
1 large egg = 31⁄4 Tbs. (21⁄4 Tbs. white and 1 rounded Tbs. yolk)
1 medium egg = 3 Tbs. (2 Tbs. white and 1 Tbs. yolk)

While it’s pretty obvious that vegans wouldn’t eat eggs, would eggs be considered fine for vegetarians? Yes but only if the vegetarian in question is an “ovo-vegetarian” (doesn’t eat meat but is fine with eggs). Even then, there’s some considerable controversy around this. Apparently, there’s also been some talk about “veggans” but I’m not quite sure where to go with that…

“This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn't say how far to separate them.” - Gracie Allen

Tired of pulling out the Paas dyes for Easter? You can do what my spouse’s family does and try your hand at Slavic egg decorating. Normally referred by its Polish (pisanki) and Ukrainian (pysanky) names, it’s practiced all over Eastern Europe2 and is very cool when watching masters at work and what kind of end result they end up with:

That being said, trying it yourself can be a bit frustrating (especially the blowing out the yolk through a pinhole). If you want to learn more about it, here’s a good article from Martha Stewart to get you started.

"An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different." - Oscar Wilde

I also posted a number of videos below that go further – some are cooking videos, some are about the business of eggs, another introduces the weirdest Batman villain ever – if you’re starting to develop Egg-mania by this point.

If all of this has got you hungry, also check out the below links for recipes on the multitude of ways to cook them:

End Notes

[1] Suggested by book contributor Caroline Lange.

[2] We usually refer to it by that name as well but since my in-laws are partially Slovak, the actual term used in Slovakia appears to be kraslica.

Addendum

Update 5/21/2023 - Realizing I prefer the actual blogging potential of the Wix site over Substack, I'm going to start posting both the main listings and the addendums over here instead.

While I working on the Substack miscellany this addendum is for, I realized two things:

Researching this was a lot of fun; and
Apparently, Substack posts can only be oh-so-long ("email-length", whatever that is).

Even for a topic like eggs, there's a lot of cool stuff out there to learn and I'm understanding why there's whole books dedicated to the topic. There might even be more egg-focused posts in the future (though not too soon - the next miscellany might focus on backgammon, not to mention I have several other essays I want to write). In the meantime, though, here are some more egg-related videos to keep it going.

Binging with Babish on eggs: