Egg Oddities

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Adam Kuban from Serious Eats reports that one reader bought a carton of Trader Joe’s jumbo eggs only to find found that every single one of them was double-yolked — that’s a total of twenty-four yolks distributed across only a dozen eggs.

I don’t know about you, but I had an immediate visceral reaction when I first laid eyes on that sea of yolks. It’s not like I’ve never encountered a double-yolked egg before. (I once found one while making an omelet and immediately whisked the whole thing together so I could pretend it never happened).

There’s just something seeing mutated foods en masse that makes me feel like the world is falling apart. One egg has only one yolk – that’s an equation that sustains our everyday logic. I can ignore one or two freak occurrences, but a whole dozen of them makes me question my view of reality.

A commenter on that Serious Eats egg post astutely points out that:

Factory farms sort out all the eggs that don’t meet the textbook image of what an egg should be. Eggs that are too long, too squat, too big, too small, unevenly shaped or colored are all picked out in order not to freak out the oh so fragile consumer.

Egg laying is a complex process…you can bet all the things coming out of the hens aren’t picture perfect.

So, what other egg mutations aren’t we aware of?

Conveniently, PoultryHelp.com has a whole page dedicated to odd eggs, complete with disturbing pictures. (Apparently enough people have emailed them with questions about egg mutations that they felt the need to give the topic it’s own FAQ).

Here’s a list of some of the creepiest egg malformations from that page:

-  NO YOLK – These are commonly called “fart eggs” in the poultry industry.

-  MORE THAN TWO YOLKS – PoultryHelp.com claims that one record-breaking egg held a total of nine yolks.

-  NO SHELL – Instead of a hard shell, a thin pliable membrane encloses the egg contents like a squishy water balloon (ugh).

-  EGG WITHIN AN EGG– It would blow my mind if I cracked an egg into a bowl and saw another miniature egg come out.

-  ODD-SHAPED – One egg found in China looks vaguely like a soup spoon (a Chinese soup spoon, of course).

Have you encountered any of these freaky eggs while making breakfast? More importantly, were you able to bring yourself to eat them?

– Christina Lee

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