I thought I knew everything about eggs. At least, everything a good cook should know. But I may have been wrong. They may not be ‘culinary’, but today’s auxilliary egg facts are indisputably fascinating…
Sister Erin strikes again! She recently came up with an obscure Reader’s Digest piece that places the ubiquitous egg in a broader, downright majestic geographical and temporal context….
We are the exception…
Mammals, including us humans, find themselves in a shocking minority position among all the cre-atures of Earth. More than 99 percent of the creatures – whether on land, in the water, or in the air – reproduce by laying eggs. True, the mammalian reproductive process does involve ‘eggs’, but they de-velop into little people inside their mother’s bodies. With the notable exceptions of the platypus and the echidna, mammals do not sit on nests.
Which came first?
I have a pat answer to the age-old question: “Which came fist, the chicken or the egg?” I say, we’re told birds evolved from small feathered dinosaurs. So the egg came first, out of a highly-evolved dinosaur. And the prevailing theory among scientists today is – I was right!
The chicken as we know it today has evolved from a wild ancestor, the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) (RJF), a tropical bird still common in Asia. The RJF is still going strong there today, along a parallel line of development. And it’s believed the RJF is descended from an even earlier offspring of feathered-dino proto-birds.
White or brown?
There’s also an ongoing debate about whether brown eggs or white eggs are healthier. Science has answered that one, too. And I’ve learned that there are more than just white and brown chicken’s eggs. We all know that robins’ eggs are blue. And speckled. Other avian species sport a wide variety of egg colours and sizes.
The simple truth is, the colour of a chicken egg shell depends on genetic properties, which can also effect plumage and skin colour. White eggs come from white chickens; brown eggs from brown chick-ens. But there are also other breeds of ‘modern chicken’ found across the globe, which lay cream coloured, blue, pink, rusty red and even green eggs. Though not the kind of green egg Dr. Seuss made famous. The shells are green, but all chicken’s eggs have the same white + (yellow) yolk structure.
And, regardless of shell colour or size, all chicken eggs taste the same, and have the same nutritional value.
Tinies to titans
Eggs come in a spectacular range of sizes, each suited to its species. Your average songbird egg is just around 1 in. / 2.5 cm tall and 0.8 in. / 2.0 cm wide. At the other end of the spectrum, the average ostrich egg averages 6.0 in. / 15 cm long and 5.2 in. / 13 cm wide.
Most of us learn, at our mother’s knee, that chickens’ eggs come in a variety of sizes, the most com-monly sold being Small, Medium and large. Most recipes call for Grade A Large Eggs. They average 2.2 in. / 2.75 cm long and 1.75 in. / 2 cm wide.
Eggs and Breakfast go hand in hand
Many folks don’t know – I certainly didn’t – that the kind of breakfast we take for granted today only came into being with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Before that, only growing children and older folks who ate sparingly at any given meal actually consumed significant amounts of solid food first thing in the morning. Everybody else settled for a cup of coffee or tea.
But when men started going to work in factories, they found they needed something solid to go on, to get through to their lunch break. Eggs were a very attractive alternative to expensive meat as a central, protein component of the meal for the low-income workers.
Thus was the association between eggs and breakfast socially codified across the western world…
My take
I just love little info-gems like the Reader’s Digest factoid on eggs. Like eggs, they’re easy to digest, ‘taste’ good and satisfy one’s curiosity without having to take on a stultifying load of surplus verbiage. The perfect brain snack for those who never lost their childhood curiosity about… Everything!
The more I learn about the world, the more I discover there is to find out…
~ Maggie J.