sprinklefingers

i’m sorry, but i think eggs are weird. that’s not to say that i don’t appreciate (in an extreme way,) their role in baking, but i still think they’re weird.

i have lots of urban farmer friends these days. getting all farmery and building chicken coops, raising chickens, wearing hunter wellies out into the backyard to check on things - you get the picture.

in addition to my farmer friends, there are now classes popping up all over about urban chicken keeping. crazy!

this chicken stuff can only mean one thing - chickens are the new black! and if you want to fit in, you’d better get one of these! (although, i have heard it said lately that goats are the new chickens, so if you really want to be ahead of the curve, you’d probably be better off getting a kid. goat, that is.)

anyways, back to eggs being weird. not only do i think they’re weird, but i also have a difficult time figuring out egg shelf life. we get a dozen eggs from one of our urban farmer friends…how long do those eggs last? the dozen eggs i buy at the local market - yeah, the carton is stamped with a date, but how long ago were the eggs laid? then, and this is just awful, what if the eggs get taken out of the carton so we can use the carton for fingerpainting (PERFECT for separating out the colors!) and the eggs get put in a bowl in the fridge. the carton was recycled after the fingerpainting and now there’s no way of knowing the date that was stamped on it. eggs! how old are you? dammit!

thank god one of my favorite book series has its shit together. as a kid, one of my favorite things to do was look through the pages of my mom’s collection of TimeLife’s The Good Cook/Techniques & Recipes. hell yes, there’s a bunch of gross stuff in there. and yes, a lot of the techniques are outdated, but the series is STILL my go-to when i have a question i just can’t figure out. and, ‘how long do eggs last?’ is one of them. but my most important egg question is this: ‘how can you tell the age of an egg?’

and the answer is in eggs & cheese. eggs & cheese is one of my favorite books of the entire series. which is weird because i really don’t like eggs. least of all an aspic with whole eggs in it (the recipe is in the book, really!) but something about the book - and eggs, i guess - truly fascinates me…so i read it. and often. i mean, the book refers to an omelet as “a packet for enrichments.” what’s not to love?

anyways, there’s a section of the book devoted to measuring an egg’s freshness by determining its buoyancy. brilliant!

and i quote, “the interior quality (of an egg) is judged by the thickness of the white, the compactness of the yolk and the amount of air in the egg. in a newly laid egg, the white is surrounded by a pair of membranes that cling to each other and the shell. as the egg ages, carbon dioxide and water evaporate through the shell pores; at the same time, air is absorbed, producing a visible pocket between the membranes at the egg’s broad end.”

the freshest eggs have the smallest air pockets. which makes its freshness measurable by testing its buoyancy!

here’s how you do it:

fill a vessel, any vessel, really, as long as an egg will fit inside it and you can see through it, with water.

place your egg in the water. look at it.
then follow this guide:

• a freshly laid egg is heavier than older eggs. there is little to no air pocket, so the egg will sit at the bottom of the vessel parallel to your countertop. or whatever you have it sitting on.

• a week old egg’s air pocket, which, to remind you, forms in the broad, rounded end of the egg, expands and gives the egg buoyancy. the egg will tilt in the water with the broad end uppermost.

• a three week old egg’s air pocket is even bigger. the egg will be so buoyant that it will stand upright in the water - broadest end pointing up, of course.

tell me this isn’t interesting! tell me you aren’t dying to test this for yourselves! go ahead, try it!