Over Easy

This morning’s non-vegan breakfast – three eggs over easy on prime rib hash – is one I never would have ordered as a kid. I had a sweet tooth (more of a sweet tooth) and so was likely to order pancakes. I did like eggs but only scrambled. Back then, yolks when runny seemed to me unpleasantly raw and yolks when firm looked and tasted pasty. Blended with the whites, though, they were good. Tastes change. By my 20s I liked lots of things I didn’t as a kid, including runny yolks. Nowadays I like eggs every which way. I rarely have pancakes.

over easy

People have been eating eggs before, strictly speaking, we were people. Eggs – whether bird or reptile – are such high nutrient sources that few animals can resist raiding nests for them and our ancestors were no exception. Someone eventually got the idea of raising birds just for the purpose.  Red junglefowl (which still exist in the wild) were bred into domestic chickens in India no later than 3200 BCE – possibly as early as 7500 BCE. Domestic chickens are documented in ancient Egypt and ancient China by 1400 BCE, and eggs were part of the cuisine in both places. Since ancient times, chickens overwhelmingly have been the source of eggs consumed by humans, though ducks, geese, ostriches, quail, and a few other birds are notable contributors.
 
We don’t know how much eggs contributed to ancient diets – they didn’t really record data on that. Present day annual per capita egg consumption in the USA however is 286. This is way down from its 1945 peak of 404, but is still a substantial number. (This figure does not take account of egg ingredients in baked goods and other products.) My own consumption is higher: probably in the 500s by rough-and-ready calculation. China currently leads the world with per capita consumption well over 300. 40% of all the chicken eggs in the world are produced in China.
 
Though chefs around the world have created a wide array of exotic egg dishes, most of us aren’t looking for anything so fancy in the morning. We want our eggs simple and in a reasonable hurry. There are only so many ways to cook eggs simply and in short order. So, it is not surprising that ancient recipes differ little from modern day ones around the globe in every way but the seasonings. The seven standard ways are
 
in water:
poached
soft boiled
hard boiled

fried:
over easy
sunny side up
scrambled
and omelet (which basically is scrambled eggs with one or more extra ingredients)
 
These preparations go by different names in different places with minor local variations in preferred runniness (and a lot of variation in preferred side dishes) but, by whatever names, they are found everywhere. There are a few regional specialties of course. Chinese century eggs (which are aged for weeks or months in clay, salt, wood ash, and quicklime) come to mind. So does balut, a Filipino treat that is a boiled fertilized duck egg. Perhaps the strangest is American, though it is not as popular as it once was. The “prairie oyster” is a raw egg in Worcester sauce (vinegar and tomato juice optional). Supposedly it is good for a hangover, and I imagine it would (if nothing else) get your mind off one. I’ve never felt motivated to try it.
 
Eggs have always been a common breakfast food, but in the early 20^th century in the US and some other Western countries there was a trend to lighter, supposedly healthier, breakfasts promoted by cereal makers such as Post and Kellogg. This trend reversed in the 1920s thanks in large part to marketing guru Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and author of the how-to book Propaganda (1928). Faced with a surplus of bacon, the Beech-Nut Packing Company hired Bernays, who found 5000 doctors to say that the old high-protein farmer’s diet was healthy after all (“doctors say…”). Bernay’s advertising campaign was a success: bacon sales took off along with sales of eggs that bacon strips so tastily accompany. There things stood until the 1960s when concerns about cholesterol and heart disease suddenly gave eggs a reputation as unhealthy, which largely accounts for the decline of per capita consumption in the US that persisted until the current century.
 
As so frequently happens with dietary advice, however, there has been a change of heart among medical professionals in recent years. According to Harvard Health Publishing, “For most people, an egg a day does not increase your risk of a heart attack, a stroke, or any other type of cardiovascular disease.” The same article notes that most cholesterol is produced by the liver in response to fats and transfats, rather than being absorbed directly from dietary sources.  A recent study of Diabetes II patients in particular, for whom eggs are a commonly recommended food, reached similar conclusions: “A healthy diet based on population guidelines and including more eggs than currently recommended by some countries may be safely consumed.”
 
As that may be (and I haven’t the expertise to contribute to the debate), my breakfast choice, truth be told, has less to do with health than satisfaction. If that turns out to be an epitaph, I can think of worse.

 

Iggy Pop – Eggs on Plate