Eggs

Eggs are full of life: they provide nutrients, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals, nearly everything needed for life. One ingredient that may seem less essential, but as we shall see figures pretty largely in the cooking of an egg, is air. It’s that tiny pocket of air that is directly related to the age and quality of an egg.

Nature included this air pocket so that the tiny, developing chick could breathe. However, when eggs are for consumption rather than hatching, they are cooled and stored and their water content starts to evaporate – and the air pocket gets bigger. It follows, therefore that, generally speaking, the larger the air pocket the staler the egg. (I say generally because sometimes a hairline crack, invisible to the human eye, can let air into a very fresh egg: but this is distinctly rare.)

The freshness of an egg is very important in cooking. Stale eggs, with their flat yolks and watery whites, spread themselves miserably to all corners of the frying pan. Not to mention the ones whose yolks in poaching water completely part company with their whites – while the whites in turn are reducing the water to a mass of foaming bubbles.

How to buy and store eggs
Number one on the list here (unless you happen to know the hens) is to buy your eggs from a supplier who has a large turnover. Boxes now (and sometimes the eggs themselves) carry a ‘best before’ date. What you should know is that this date, provided the egg box is stamped with the lion mark, corresponds precisely to 21 days after laying (not packing), so you are, therefore, able to work out just how fresh your eggs are.

Although it is now being recommended that eggs should be stored in the refrigerator, I never do. The reason for this is that for most cooking purposes, eggs are better used at room temperature. If I kept them in the fridge I would have the hassle of removing them half an hour or so before using them. A cool room or larder is just as good, but if, however, you think your kitchen or store cupboard is too warm and want to store them in the fridge, you’ll need to try to remember to let your eggs come to room temperature before you use them. My answer to the storage problem is to buy eggs in small quantities so I never have to keep them too long anyway.

The very best way to store eggs is to keep them in their own closed, lidded boxes. Because the shells are porous, eggs can absorb the flavours and aromas of other strong foods, so close the boxes and keep them fairly isolated, particularly if you’re storing them in the fridge.

There is, however, one glorious exception to this rule. My dear friend and great chef Simon Hopkinson once came to stay in our house. He brought some new-laid eggs in a lidded box, which also contained a fresh black truffle. He arrived on Maundy Thursday, and on Easter Sunday made some soft scrambled eggs, which by now had absorbed all the fragrance and flavour of the truffle. Served with thin shavings of the trufflle sprinkled over, I have to say they were the very best Easter eggs I have ever tasted!

What about cholesterol?
Eggs, I am very happy to report, are out of the firing line on the cholesterol front. It is now believed that the real culprits on this one are saturated fat and partially hydrogenated fat, which eggs, thankfully, are low in. There is more good news, too: even if you are on a low-fat diet, eating up to seven eggs a week is okay. Hooray!

How safe are they?
Poor old eggs; just as they recover from one slur, along comes another. Eggs, as we know, can harbour a bacterium called salmonella. Cases of food poisoning, or even death, from eating eggs are isolated but do occur. Therefore, the only way we can be absolutely certain of not being affected is by only eating eggs that are well cooked, with hard yolks and no trace of softness or runny yolk at all. Ugh!

What we all need to do is consider this very seriously and be individually responsible for making our own decisions. Life, in the end, is full of risks. The only way I can be absolutely sure I won’t be involved in a car accident (and statistically this is a far greater risk than eating eggs) is to never ride in a car. But I am, personally, willing to take that risk – as I am when I eat a soft-boiled egg. So it’s a personal decision. As a general practice, though, it is not advisable to serve these to vulnerable groups, such as very young children, pregnant women, the elderly or anyone weakened by serious illness.

Some general egg information

1. Is there any difference between brown and white shells?
   None whatsoever. The colour of the shell is determined by the breed of the hen that laid it. Aesthetically speaking, white denotes a sophisticated kind of purity, while brown is full of rural wholesomeness.
2. Size. Having gone through a couple of decades of numbering eggs, we are now back to size descriptions, which are as follows: very large, large, medium and small. Please note that the eggs I use in all my recipes are large.
3. The eggs now available on a large scale commercially are as follows: free-range means the hens have continuous daytime access to open-air runs that contain vegetation; barn or perchery means the hens are enclosed but have floor space covered in straw, or other materials. Eggs labelled organic are produced in the same way as free-range but, in this case, the hens’ habitat is land that has been certified as free from herbicides and pesticides (as is the land on which their feed has been grown). The remaining eggs are all produced in battery units.
4. There are, of course, other types of eggs. I have included recipes and timings for commercially produced eggs (ie hens’ and quails’ eggs), but if you have access to, and want to cook other types of eggs (goose, turkey, duck), then allow extra time for size. If you are baking, the best way to measure is by comparing the eggs you are using, weight for weight, with hens’ eggs to give you a guideline. Gulls’ eggs are pretty rare and exclusive, but they should be boiled like quails’ eggs, peeled, and are traditionally served with a sprinkling of celery salt.

Related recipes to look at:

Eggs en Cocotte
Eggs Benedict
Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Brioche
Gratin of Eggs with Peppers and Chorizo