Eggs Gallus gallus domesticus
Age decides the job. Fresh eggs poach tight; older eggs peel clean after boiling.
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In the kitchen
Under heat
The proteins in the white set around 63°C, well before the yolk does around 70°C — that gap is the entire window a soft yolk lives in.
Against air
The shell is porous; an egg left out slowly loses moisture and gains air through it, which is why older eggs float and fresh ones sink.
In storage
Fridge, pointed end down, in the carton — the carton blocks other food’s odors from passing through the shell.
At the shop
Check the sell-by date, not the shell color. Brown and white eggs from the same breed are identical inside.
Which variety, for what
- Large
- The standard size assumed by virtually every baking recipe — swap in a different size and the ratios shift.
- Extra-large / jumbo
- More liquid per egg — fine for scrambling or frying, risky substituted straight into a recipe written for large.
Beyond the kitchen
SHELL COLOUR IS THE BREED
White and brown shells come from different breeds and tell you nothing about flavour, quality or how the hen was kept. A rough rule is that white-feathered hens with white earlobes lay white eggs. Yolk colour, by contrast, reflects feed directly.
WASHED OR UNWASHED
American eggs are washed at processing, which removes the natural cuticle and requires refrigeration thereafter. Most European eggs are unwashed, keep the cuticle, and sit unrefrigerated in shops. Neither is wrong; they are different systems and you cannot switch between them.
TEMPERA AND GILDING
Egg tempera was the dominant European painting medium before oil paint, and most surviving pre-Renaissance panel painting is made with egg yolk. Egg white, or glair, was used as a binder and varnish in manuscript illumination and in gilding.
THE FLOAT TEST
An egg's air cell grows as moisture escapes through the shell, so a very old egg floats in water and a fresh one lies flat on the bottom. It is a rough age indicator rather than a safety test — smell remains the decisive check.
A longer history
Chickens were kept for eggs across Asia, the Near East and the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and Roman cooking used them extensively — Apicius calls for them constantly, and the Roman convention of beginning a meal with eggs and ending with apples gave Latin the phrase ab ovo usque ad mala.
Eggs carried heavy symbolic weight in Europe, particularly around Easter, where the prohibition on eating them during Lent coincided with hens beginning to lay again in spring — a surplus that produced both the decorated egg and the pancake. Decorated eggs in eastern Europe, pysanky above all, constitute a folk art tradition of real depth.
Egg production industrialised in the twentieth century through battery cages, artificial lighting to control laying cycles, and breeding for output; a modern laying hen produces around three hundred eggs a year against perhaps a hundred a century ago. Cage systems have since been banned or restricted across the EU and in a growing number of US states, and the market has shifted substantially toward barn, free-range and organic.
RAW AND LIGHTLY COOKED EGGS
Mayonnaise, mousse, tartare, hollandaise and soft-set custards use eggs raw or barely cooked. Use pasteurised eggs for those, or eggs from a scheme your country's food safety agency recognises for that purpose. Guidance differs by jurisdiction and has changed within the last decade — check your own agency rather than relying on what a recipe assumed.
