Teri Lyn Fisher - The Perfect Egg: A Fresh Take on Recipes for Morning, Noon, and Night

Consider the egg, its fragile armor perfectly shaped to protect an essential and versatile food. It delivers flavor, texture, and nutrition, whether standing proudly on its own or playing a crucial role in a myriad of dishes. Itching to bake? Beat a few eggs to aerate them, and then use them to both leaven and give structure to a cake batter. Need to enrich a sauce? Whisk in an egg yolk for flavor and body. Looking to lighten a souffl? Whip egg whites to beautiful, glossy peaks, then fold them into the souffl base. Want to silence your growling belly with a protein-packed bite? Cook up an egg on its own for a quick, delicious, and nutritious snack. Most people think of eggs as something to scramble, hard boil, fry over easy, or maybe whisk for a quiche. In The Perfect Egg, we explore the universality of this iconic food, in both everyday and more innovative preparations.

Eggs come in a charming array of colors, from bright white, nutty brown, rich green, and light blue to brown and tan speckles on a pale background. Their shells may be thick or thin, their shapes oblong or squat. Chicken eggs are smaller, have a milder flavor, and have a more delicate shell than duck eggs, which typically sport a large, deep-orange yolk and boast a particularly rich flavor. Quail eggs, which are no bigger than a teaspoon, taste similar to chicken eggs, with creamy yolks and soft whites. Our recipes call for all three types of eggs.

Since the 1980s, eggs have been demonized as both high in cholesterol and potential salmonella carriers. More recently, however, advanced research and better sustainability practices have helped to diminish many of the fears surrounding egg consumption. Nowadays, people are beginning to recognize eggs as among the most affordable and widely available sources of protein. Theyre also easily renewable, are quick and easy to cook, and are dense with nutrients, such as antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.

In the pages that follow, we describe the different varieties of eggs available, discuss the anatomy of the egg so that you can better understand how each part behaves in a recipe, provide a primer on egg grading, and decode the many descriptive labels found on store cartons. We also share our foolproof techniques for nine common egg preparations, from baked, boiled, and coddled to scrambled and steamed, which you can serve as is or use as building blocks for creating your own dishes. Most importantly, we reveal the recipes for our favorite egg dishes from around the world, which we have organized by time of day or type of treat: morning, snacks, afternoon, night, and sweets.

Eggs are so commonplace that we usually just grab a carton at the supermarket without thinking too much about whats inside. And why not? Eggs all look pretty much alikesame color (brown or white), same shape (oval)and taste pretty much alike. But there are differences, and understanding what they are will help to make you a savvier shopper and cook. We will start off with a brief history of commercial egg production in the United States, which helps to explain why eggs are so widely available, and then describe the most common egg varieties available, how eggs are graded and sized, and how to decode the language you find on an egg carton.

In the early 1900s, most farm families in America raised at least a few chickens for eggs and, to a much lesser degree, for meat. With the discovery of vitamin D in the early 1920s, the size of the flocks grew as farmers began to mix the vitamin into chicken feed to keep their birds, which traditionally struggled to stay alive during the winter months, fairly healthy year-round. The family chicken flock soon became a welcome source of income, and for the next three decades, the majority of the countrys commercial egg industry was the product of relatively small farms. That changed in the 1950s with the growth of the cage system, in which hens were housed in elevated cages to improve production efficiency as well as sanitary conditions through organization and ventilation, a move that initially benefitted both the birds and consumers. Today, the cage system has replaced the farmyard flock as the source of most commercial chicken eggs, with the majority of commercial egg farmers caring for flocks that number in the tens of thousands of birds.

Recently, a growing number of consumers have been passing up the cheaper, less ethically produced cage system eggs (poor-quality feed, growth-inducing drugs, crowded conditions) in favor of more costly free-range or ) laid by hens that enjoy a more healthful diet (which determines how an egg tastes) and more spacious quarters.

Egg grading follows standards established by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for both the exterior and the interior of the egg. The exterior, or shell, is evaluated for such features as texture, shape, cleanliness, and fissures. A process known as candling, which uses high-intensity light, is used to illuminate the interior, allowing for inspection of such qualities as the firmness and purity of the yolk, the density of the white, and the size of the grades, AA, A, and B, in descending order of quality.

Once eggs are graded, they are sorted according to size. The established sizes are classified by the USDA according to the minimum net weight affirmed in ounces per dozen. Here we have listed the different sizes available to the public, from smallest to largest, along with the average weights for both a single egg dozen.

Egg cartons packed in a USDA-inspected plant must always include a pack date, which is the day the eggs were cleaned, graded, and loaded into the carton. It is a three-digit number on one end of the carton, and it represents the consecutive day of the year. For example, if the eggs were packed on January 1, the date would read 001; and on December 31, it would be 365. Although not required by law, a sell by date is usually stamped near the pack date. It includes the month, day, and sometimes the year, such as Aug 10 | 14. In USDA-inspected plants, the sell by date cannot be more than 30 days after the pack date. What follows are some of the other common labels you will encounter on egg cartons.