What makes a good egg?

[Kent Wang]

Having read over the eGullet Culinary Institute sessions on egg, I am still uncertain what makes a good egg. I have access to a number of different vendors at the local farmers markets, so let's limit this discussion to farmers eggs and not even consider supermarket eggs -- even if they're fancy organic, free-range, etc.

Is diet the most important thing? A few of the vendors I've asked say that their hens eat mostly bugs but they do give them some feed. Is a diet with lower percentage of feed better?

Some vendors only sell a few dozen eggs a week while others produce many times that, a few are even egg-only vendors. Will a smaller producer tend to have better eggs?

The eGCI lesson has this to say about color:

Q: What determines the color of the yolk?

A: Diet. It's fairly simple to manipulate the color of an egg by adding marigolds or other foods containing xanthophylls (yellow pigments) to a hen's diet. Eggs in the US are the color they are because that's the color consumers seem to like. In Europe for whatever reason they like their eggs to be more orange in color. It's theoretically possible to make an egg with virtually no color, for example by feeding a diet of white corn. There's not necessarily a connection between color and flavor, though there can be. In the US, it's unlawful to add food coloring as such to chicken feed -- though this would be an effective strategy for coloring eggs.

If one considers only farmers, who are not as likely to manipulate their diet solely to add color as an egg factory might, is darker yolk color a good indicator of quality?

[WiscoNole]

A good egg will have a yolk that is very voluminous (not flat). It will also have 2 distinct whites.

[Dave the Cook]

I agree that those are characteristics of a good fresh egg. But good eggs that are older won't necessarily exhibit these properties, and there are uses for which old eggs are better -- hard-boiling, for example.

[sparrowgrass]

Too many variables to consider.

Someone with a small flock may allow the birds to really "free-range"--travel thru the yard and barnyard, eating bugs and seeds and anything else that doesn't eat them first, and the eggs will be lovely, with rich orange yolks. Eggs are gathered every day, washed, and kept cool--superb.

Or, they might have the same conditions, except they don't clean the nests, they don't collect eggs every day, and they don't keep them cool--in that case, the eggs from the chickens that are kept in a run and fed commercial feed might taste better.

My girls are kept in a run. They get lots of garden stuff, old yellow cukes and zukes, wormy corn, soft tomatoes, grass clippings, pulled weeds. Their eggs are not as orange as when I used to let them roam the yard, but my flower beds are prettier when they girls are locked up.

Edited August 27, 2007 by sparrowgrass (log)

[Shalmanese]

taste them, side by side if possible.