Testing for best quality eggs

[jessicahowles]

Hi guys, I am interested in buying a variety of eggs from my local supermarket and test them to find out which is the best gourmet egg. Any suggestions on what is the best objective way to gauge which is the best? Two ideas I have come up with include cracking them open to look at the egg yolk color. I am also going to cook the eggs using sous-vide at a temperature of 64.5 degree celsius and conduct a taste test.

[ChrisZ]

I suppose it comes down to how you define "best" and how you define "gourmet". Commercially produced eggs are tested before packing to check for blood spots, blood spots being considered bad, but blood spots may not deter a gourmet who prefers organic food- so it's possible that "best" and "gourmet" have conflicting definitions...

It is easy to test the freshness of an egg at home- just place it in a jug of water. A fresh egg sinks to the bottom, and eggs will become more buoyant over time to the point that a stale/off egg will float. My mum, who was raised on a farm, still checks all eggs in a sink of water to see if they float before they're used. But is freshness related to "best" or "gourmet"? Is a fresh cage-egg better than a 2-week old organic egg? I don't know.

Organic & free range eggs usually have much more vibrantly coloured yolks. I've used home-laid eggs in vanilla ice-cream and had it finish up deep yellow; the same for sponge cakes. But I won't pretend that I can taste a difference between home-laid eggs and supermarket eggs. So in my experience with baking there can be a huge difference in appearance, but not necessarily taste. I'm sure that others will disagree and this will be the main discussion point... Perhaps cooking the eggs sous-vide and eating them individually will reveal a more obvious difference than making them into custards and cakes.

If you can find a copy of McGee's food bible then he has a whole chapter devoted to eggs, it will probably be very useful to your study.

[Kat Tanaka Okopnik]

I got a chance to try some very good local eggs this past winter, and I can report that in something that truly showcases eggs, the taste difference can be tremendous. I found that in frying the eggs sunnyside up, even among local eggs, the ones from a particular producer really stood out, even over organic eggs from the grocery store. The yolks were deep yellow, almost orange, and buttery tasting even when fried using canola oil. They made the most amazing "puffy pancake" ever, too. I miss those eggs!

Freshness matters for some things (poaching, separating yolks), and is actually not the best for others (boiling).

[Darienne]

I got a chance to try some very good local eggs this past winter, and I can report that in something that truly showcases eggs, the taste difference can be tremendous. I found that in frying the eggs sunnyside up, even among local eggs, the ones from a particular producer really stood out, even over organic eggs from the grocery store. The yolks were deep yellow, almost orange, and buttery tasting even when fried using canola oil. They made the most amazing "puffy pancake" ever, too. I miss those eggs!

Freshness matters for some things (poaching, separating yolks), and is actually not the best for others (boiling).

Ditto for me.

Our local chain market carries a local farmer's eggs. And this is over the dead body of the chain administration. The local folks refused to shop there if Scully's eggs were barred...as the admin tried to do.

We eat sunny side up fried eggs twice a week and boy can I tell a good egg from a ho-hum egg after years of practice.

[nickrey]

One key issue for me with eggs is the freshness and the degree to which they retain their viscosity. This is particularly important because I poach eggs and don't want the white floating away as a mesh of flimsy filaments.

As the egg ages, the albumen (white) becomes denatured and watery and the yolk membrane becomes weaker. At the same time, the egg loses water through its permeable shell.

Fill a saucepan with water. Place the egg in the water unopened. If it floats, the eggs is more air than substance: throw it away. If it sinks, it is fresh and what you are probably looking for.

If you are poaching eggs and they are a bit older than you would like, McGee suggests sliding the egg onto a perforated spoon prior to cooking. The runny egg white just flows away: mind you, if the egg is too old, you wind up with a yolk and not much else.

[Kent Wang]

I've never been able to tell the difference between a sunny side up egg from the farmers market and grade AA large from the supermarket. I'm talking taste only. Some of the farmers eggs are more orange, but I don't think they taste any differently.

Has anybody actually done a side-by-side blind comparison?

[janeer]

One key issue for me with eggs is the freshness and the degree to which they retain their viscosity. This is particularly important because I poach eggs and don't want the white floating away as a mesh of flimsy filaments.

Freshness is key to taste and performance, and I do love local eggs. Here is how to recognize the freshest eggs when buying at a market:

My link

[Kat Tanaka Okopnik]

I've never been able to tell the difference between a sunny side up egg from the farmers market and grade AA large from the supermarket. I'm talking taste only. Some of the farmers eggs are more orange, but I don't think they taste any differently.

Has anybody actually done a side-by-side blind comparison?

Eggs, as I noted above, can vary greatly. I was able to tell the difference between different local suppliers, much less supermarket vs. fresh locally grown. Quantum levels of difference, really. (There were local suppliers whose eggs were only just a little better than supermarket, admittedly. But the top end really is astronomically better.)

[DTBarton]

Here's a link to a story in this week's Washington Post food section about a blind taste test on eggs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/06/01/ST2010060101402.html

[Blether]

I expended a lot of effort to find good eggs in this city. It's easy enough to find good eggs in the country - go to enough country hotels and you'll come across the places where the eggs are locally-produced, from properly-kept hens that eat green stuff and spend time outdoors, not tasteless, caged battery product. The taste difference is, as has been said, incredible.

I think it was in the spring of last year that I spent 2 or 3 months working through different eggs here. I searched the net in English and Japanese; I avoided the internet-order-direct-from-supplier because of cost and practicality. I found some recommended free-range eggs that I tried a number of times, but they weren't it. I tried the expensive eggs in the supermarkets - 4 and 6 dollars for half a dozen (that's one-dollar eggs !) - and they were orange-yolked but still near flavourless.

Finally I stumbled on a proper country egg, 3 bucks for 10, that reliably tastes richly of egg. There seems no rhyme or reason to the relationship between eating quality and price; the market clearly doesn't understand or doesn't appreciate its eggs. It seems the marketing is always slanted to the latest wonder-chemical-compound that any particular egg can boast - science bribed by "big food", and the eating quality has just been lost, forgotten. Personally, I just don't want to eat eggs without that rich, egg-yolk flavour.

[dougal]

... Any suggestions on what is the best objective way to gauge which is the best? Two ideas I have come up with include cracking them open to look at the egg yolk color. I am also going to cook the eggs using sous-vide at a temperature of 64.5 degree celsius and conduct a taste test.

"Best" is whatever is best for you and your cooking.

However yolk colour only indicates how much of the colouring compounds there were in the feed.

And yes, just like farmed salmon, producers can use a colour chart to select the feed - here to give the yolk colour they want.

Personally, I think a modicum of good animal welfare practice should be there.

Take a look at this http://www.woodlandeggs.co.uk/

And that the colour should be from natural food, rather than dye-rich processed waste from elsewhere.

Other people might want other assurances, such that the feed was gm-free.

Some people even get fussed about the aesthetics of the shell colour ... which inevitably leads you to comparing the claims of different breeds of hen ... you did know there are lots, didn't you? Some examples http://www.wylyevalleychickens.co.uk/Breeds.htm

In the UK, egg-coding and package info legislation ensures that you can see how fresh commercially-packed eggs are. The "Best before" date is four weeks from laying, and the "Sell by" date is three weeks from laying.

So, buying eggs with two weeks of sell-by or three weeks of best-before life would ensure that they are less than one week old.

When frying an old egg, the white really runs out across the pan - with a fresh egg it stays much tighter. Its easy to tell.

Why not ask around and see if any friends of friends are keeping a few hens at home? Hens make great (and productive) pets, and the eggs from 'pet' hens can be among the best you'll taste. And sometimes hobby-hens produce a glut of eggs ...

In the UK, there are organisations re-homing 'spent' battery hens, as still-productive pets. Is there anything like this http://www.bhwt.org.uk/cms/re-home-some-hens/ in your neck of the woods?

Edited June 5, 2010 by dougal (log)

[Kent Wang]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/06/01/ST2010060101402.html

Thanks. Here's the money quote:

Had Pat Curtis, a poultry scientist at Auburn University, been at the tasting, she wouldn't have been at all surprised. "People's perception of egg flavor is mostly psychological," she told me in a phone interview. "If you ask them what tastes best, they'll choose whatever they grew up with, whatever they buy at the market. When you have them actually taste, there's not enough difference to tell."

The egg industry has been conducting blind tastings for years. The only difference is that they don't use dish-towel blindfolds; they have special lights that mask the color of the yolks. "If people can see the difference in the eggs, they also find flavor differences," Curtis says. "But if they have no visual cues, they don't."

Only one factor can markedly affect an egg's taste, and that is the presence of strong flavors in the feed. "Omega-3 eggs can sometimes have a fishy taste if the hens are fed marine oils," Curtis says. Garlic and citrus might also be detectable. Egg producers, though, don't give their chickens garlic or citrus. They give them mostly soy and corn. "Chicken feed has neutral flavors, so you don't taste a difference in the eggs," she says.