6.
EGG VOGUE
The egg is timeless. But it’s not immune to being the subject of our fashions—falling into style, and then falling out of it again (say, when new scientific research launches us into concern over our cholesterol levels and egg white omelets sweep the nation). Once upon a time, circa the 1960s, the soufflé was big (though mysterious, too)—thanks to Julia Child. During the years we unconscionably loved Jell-O, people put whole eggs into their molded creations (in France, they loved oeufs en gelée, hard-boiled eggs suspended in aspic [this page]). Then came the 1970s, when the quiche was particularly in style—though real men didn’t eat it. Salads with eggy components and/or dressings—Caesar, green goddess, Cobb—took the runway. In the 1980s, we ate deviled eggs in our shoulder-padded power suits. The 1990s brought the sous-vide egg into the spotlight, made in a machine that could hold an egg at a steady temperature for a perfectly rendered yolk. Then there are the twentieth and twenty-first century’s vaunted eggs of fine dining: Alain Passard’s egg with crème fraîche and syrup; Juan Mari Arzak’s poached egg; René Redzepi’s hen and egg. They were innovations, to be sure, but also prime examples of eggs as occupying—and representing!—a specific moment in human time. There are the tools we use to cook and alter our eggs, changing through the years, yet the same: the in-shell scramblers, the omelet pans, the cups and coddlers and platters.
The stylish egg—trendy one decade, then disdained the next! Like bell-bottoms, we wear an egg one way, then cast it aside for another style entirely. These days we Instagram eggs with their bright orange yolks, oozing from atop toast or into ramen (follow @all_about_eggs).
Eggs in vogue not only tell us about the world we live in, they hold a mirror up to who we are: our hopes, our fears, our dreams, our ingenuity, our ineptitude. Eggs are us, and we are eggs.
Soufflé
The soufflé is a dish that proves eggs are perfect. The French soufflé dates back to the eighteenth century and is credited to the chef Antoine Beauvilliers (who was also possibly the first restaurateur in history to ever provide menus). The French verb souffler means “to blow,” which is a constant reminder that soufflés have a reputation as a high-pressure food (don’t blow it!). But soufflés are way easier to make than the fearmongers would have us believe. They won’t fall if you make a loud noise. It’s not that hard to get them to rise, if you understand the basic principles: A soufflé is frothed egg whites, plus some other stuff, that get puffed up when baked.
That said, a few guidelines are: (1) Use the right dish to hold your soufflé. The traditional soufflé dish is porcelain with straight sides, but you could use any ovenproof vessel, as long as it’s the right size: Your soufflé batter should almost reach three-quarters or seven-eighths the way up. (2) Do not overbeat the egg whites! (3) Always serve your soufflé in the dish it was baked in. Don’t try to transfer it to another dish.
Makes 4 servings
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp very finely grated parmesan cheese
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
⅛ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp mustard powder
4 egg yolks, at room temperature
1 cup packed coarsely grated gruyère cheese
6 egg whites, at room temperature
1. Remove all the racks from your oven except the bottommost rack. Heat the oven to 400°F.
2. Butter a 6-cup soufflé dish (using 1 tablespoon of the butter) and sprinkle with the parmesan as you would flour a pan, tapping out the excess.
3. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour, then the milk, and heat until foamy, whisking until thickened. Remove from the heat, and add the salt, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard. Whisk the yolks in one at a time, blending after each addition, then whisk in the gruyère until melted. Let cool to room temperature.
4. While the base is cooling, whip the egg whites until they’re glossy and hold stiff peaks.
5. Fold the whipped whites into the soufflé base in three additions, incorporating until just streaky after each addition. Do not overmix. Transfer to the soufflé dish.
6. Bake for 25 minutes without peeking (though it’s not the end of the world if you do). The soufflé should be puffed and golden, and should jiggle a bit. Serve right away!
Quiche Lorraine
Real men don’t eat quiche, according to a 1982 book by Bruce Feirstein, which was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 55 weeks and sold over 1.6 million copies (just like this book, what a coincidence!). The book actually satirized gender norms. Which is to say, everyone can eat quiche, and cook it, too.
Makes 4 servings
6 oz bacon, diced
1 cup finely chopped onions
+ salt
4 eggs
1 cup half-and-half
¼ cup chopped chives
+ freshly ground black pepper
+ freshly grated nutmeg
+ baked Pie Crust
1 cup grated gruyère, Swiss, or cheddar cheese
1. Heat the oven to 400°F.
2. Put the bacon in a cold, medium skillet and set over medium heat. Once the bacon sizzles, stir it occasionally and cook until crisp and well rendered, about 8 minutes. Remove the bacon from the pan with a slotted spoon.
3. Add the onions to the bacon fat. Fold them over in the fat, season lightly with salt, and sweat, folding occasionally, until they are a light, even caramel color and completely translucent, 10 to 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the onions to a bowl. Discard any remaining fat in the pan.
4. Whisk the eggs, half-and-half, and chives in a bowl and season generously with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Set aside.
5. Build the quiche: Dump the bacon and onions into the cooled pie crust and spread into an even layer. Pour the egg mixture over the filling. Sprinkle with the cheese.
6. Bake until the quiche is golden brown and the custard is set, 40 to 50 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before serving.
Accoutrements
Karen Leibowitz
Ensconced in their shells, eggs are perfectly packaged and self-contained. Yet something about human nature compels us to dress our eggs up with all manner of tools and trimmings—perhaps because we feel a bit inadequate, as mammals, in the presence of an eggshell, and that spurs us to overcompensate with everything from specialized cooking tools to ostentatious tableware.
Whatever the reason, eggs activate our urge to accessorize, and every age has its own favored egg accoutrements, which reflect each era’s particular cultural anxiety. Whereas egg appurtenances once testified to the class status of those who could afford to pay others to serve them from the proper dish, the twentieth century gave rise to egg-related tools meant to demonstrate culinary mastery and streamline cooking techniques. As food historian Dr. Megan Elias pointed out, when domestic help became less and less common during the period between the Depression and the Second World War, our treatment of eggs began to reflect a new focus on cooking as a form of socializing. “When the food is on display as a finished product, those things are more likely to be from the early-twentieth century, when middle-class people were more likely to have servants,” Elias said. “Things that show off your cooking are late-twentieth century, when people started to go into each other’s kitchens, and cooking became more of the entertainment.”
So what can we deduce from the appearance of newfangled egg objets of the twenty-first century, like bento egg shapers and in-the-shell-scramblers? Maybe that egg eaters of the twenty-first century want to have it all, to be our own servants and our own domestic goddesses at once. We want to make our eggs cute, novel, and likeable. In that sense, the archetypal contemporary egg accessory is Instagram (*cough* @all_about_eggs).
Eggcups are the original ovoid accessories, designed to mimic and bolster an eggshell while its boiled contents are spooned out. Archaeologists have found evidence of stone eggcups from Crete that date back to the eighteenth century BCE, and silver eggcups were discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. Eggcups became a standard part of many European banquets in the fifteenth century, but really gained traction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when European table manners were particularly centered on specialized place settings and dishes. Designs range from the simplest of ceramics to whimsical plastic chickens to postmodern metal prongs. And eggcups inspire enthusiasm: Collectors call themselves “pocillovists.”
Deviled Egg Plates were first crafted in the late 1880s, probably inspired by oyster plates, but they really came into their own around the turn of the twentieth century, when deviling became a national fad. While Northerners in the United States liked to devil shellfish, Southerners were inclined toward deviled eggs, which were often brought to picnics, or displayed on specialized platters for indoor gatherings. “Deviled egg plates are particularly Southern,” according to Liz Williams, president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. Williams said that Southern dinnerware generally includes a deviled egg plate, usually with a dozen egg-size divots arranged around a central dipping area for extra deviled egg salad, and that it is also common for Southerners to own an additional deviled egg plate that could be used with other china sets as well. During the postwar period, the egg-size divots and bonus dipping area of deviled egg plates offered a flexible design palette for personal expression, ranging from fancy etched glass to whimsical chicken-themed ceramics, and hostesses prided themselves on their choices.
Egg Cartons in their current form—molded recycled paper, polystyrene, or clear plastic dimples topped with a flat lid—are so standardized that they seem almost timeless. In fact, the ubiquitous egg carton design was created in the 1950s, by H.G. Bennett, as an improvement upon the first egg carton invented in 1918 by Joseph Doyle and in response to postwar shopping patterns, which required eggs to be shipped from rural suppliers to urban supermarkets. These days, eggs are almost always labeled by size and sold by the dozen or half-dozen, but it was not always so. Until the dawn of the egg carton, eggs were often transported in boxes or baskets and sold by volume, weight, or individual egg.
Quiche Pans, Soufflé Dishes, and Crepe Griddles got a big boost in the early 1960s from Julia Child. Her bestselling cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, introduced the American public to cooking exotic foreign egg dishes, with recipes like her famous quiche Lorraine, while her award-winning TV show, The French Chef, revolutionized kitchen design. As Dr. Megan Elias explained, “In the fifties, all the cabinets are closed, but in the Julia Child era, people had stuff on pegboards, so you could see it. Cooking became more of the entertainment.” When Julia Child hung a copper saucepan on the pegboard wall of her kitchen, it led the way to Sur La Table and the aestheticization of specialized cooking tools, for eggs and otherwise.
Single-Function Egg-Cooking Gadgets flourished in the 1980s and ’90s, when convenience started to replace common sense in the kitchen. An inexperienced cook might buy into the egg piercer’s dire warnings about cracked boiled eggs; the squeamish might prefer an egg separator to good old-fashioned fingers; but it’s not clear what sort of person purchases a “hand powered ‘in-shell’ egg shaker,” which makes it possible to beat an egg before it’s cracked. Or perhaps these simplified egg-cooking tools are all meant for children. Margaret Fox, restaurateur and author of the egg chapter in the 1997 Joy of Cooking, harbors some fond memories of an egg poacher she used as a child: “You’d crack your egg into it and put it into simmering water with a lid. That would be the first way of poaching eggs without dealing with the wildness and the vinegar. When I was little and I made those, it really felt like cooking.”
Egg Shapers such as egg rings have a long history in short-order restaurants, where a fried egg needs to fit neatly on a bun or an English muffin, but there’s now a market for egg rings shaped like hearts, stars, guns, and genitals as well. The most traditional “egg ring,” of course, is hollowed-out toast in a classic egg-in-the-basket preparation that’s delighted children for generations. And though Japanese bento lunches date back to the sixteenth century, Japanese mothers today use plastic bento molds to press hard-boiled eggs into bunnies, bears, and frogs. Parents work behind the scenes to ensure that their children can have the most enviable lunch boxes, like domestic servants of yesteryear. And so we come full circle, and eggs are still the medium for our social anxieties.
Eggs in Aspic
Tatiana Levha, chef at Le Servan in Paris, serves her take on French oeufs en gelée at her corner bistro in the 11th arrondissement (which, if you’re ever in Paris, you need to get to tout de suite. It’s so good!). “Oeufs en gelée is something you find in very traditional butcher shops,” Tatiana explains. An egg with vegetables suspended in meat broth gelatin: It was a way to use leftover meat jelly from charcuterie preparations. Along with an inexpensive egg, it made for “a way to combine everything and feed people.” “It’s a funny idea to put an egg in jelly,” Tatiana agrees. Her version is a soft-boiled egg with an oozy yolk, a mound of salad (celery, or sometimes fava beans), trout roe, and scoops of aspic. “Between the egg yolk and the jelly and the fish roe, it’s all very slimy, and it’s strong. That’s the idea,” she explains. “It’s also a bit strange because it’s soft, but also cold. Some people find it too weird.” I find it weird in the best way—surprising, and really good.
Makes 4 servings
2 tbsp cold water
2 tsp unflavored gelatin powder
2 cups beef or vegetable stock
¼ cup katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp black vinegar
+ salt
1 cup peeled fava beans or 1 cup ½-inch pieces celery, cut at an angle
1 tbsp olive oil
4 eggs
¼ cup herbs or celery leaves
4 oz trout roe
1. Pour the water into a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over. Let stand until the gelatin is translucent.
2. Bring the stock to a simmer in a saucepan and stir in the katsuobushi. Remove from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Strain and season with the soy sauce, black vinegar, and a pinch of salt. The broth should be smoky and well seasoned. Stir the gelatin into the hot broth until completely dissolved. Let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until firm, at least 6 hours.
3. Meanwhile, blanch the favas in a pot of boiling salted water until just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and transfer to a bowl. Toss with the olive oil and season lightly with salt.
4. Soft-boil the eggs: Bring water to a boil in a saucepan, then add the eggs. Cook for 4½ minutes. Remove, rinse with cold water until cool enough to handle, then carefully peel.
5. Place a peeled egg on each of 4 serving dishes, then scoop about ½ cup of the aspic around each egg. Add the herbs to the favas and toss again. Divide among the plates, arranging them prettily. Add a couple of large spoonfuls of the trout roe right next to the egg, over the aspic and favas, and serve.
Caesar Salad
My friend Tod Chubrich made this particular Caesar salad one evening in San Francisco in 2008 and I still remember everyone eating it ravenously, without forks, like it was pizza. I emailed Tod for his recipe afterward, and have been using this dressing for the last near-decade (sometimes with kale, which it is also amazing with). Recently I emailed him to ask for permission to reprint the recipe here. He wrote, “OMG Rachel! My life is now complete. I can’t believe you’ve been using it all these years!” He elaborated with some notes, which further prove why Tod is the best: “In my book there are two schools of Caesar salad: the traditional style, for which the Zuni recipe is basically canonical and impossible to improve on, and the creamy style, which is more common and is usually mediocre at best—unless I make it! My inspiration was the glorious Caesar at my favorite lunch spot in high school, the dearly departed Café Louis in Boston, at the time a satellite of the legendary Al Forno in Providence. I think their recipe used pecorino instead of parmesan, but with a lot of tinkering I arrived at something delicious if not identical to the original.”
Makes 2 to 4 servings (1½ cups dressing)
1 egg
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 salt-packed anchovies, rinsed and patted dry
¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the croutons
1 garlic clove, peeled
+ coarse salt
1 cup finely grated parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
3 cups 1-inch cubes baguette
2 tbsp butter, melted (optional)
1 large head romaine lettuce, leaves separated and washed
1. Drop the egg in a blender and add the lemon juice and anchovies and blend until smooth. Drizzle the oil into the blender until you have a smooth creamy dressing. Scrape the dressing into a bowl.
2. Smash the garlic clove onto a cutting board, sprinkle with coarse salt, and scrape into a paste with the side of a chef’s knife. Scrape up and add to the bowl with the dressing. Add the parmesan and stir until well blended. The dressing can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days.
3. Heat the oven to 325°F.
4. Place the bread in a bowl and drizzle with a little oil and the melted butter (if using), tossing so the croutons become coated but not soaked. Season with salt and dump into a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake until crunchy and a bit golden, about 10 minutes.
5. Either toss the romaine with the dressing or arrange on dinner plates and drizzle with the dressing. Scatter some croutons and parmesan to finish.
Steakhouse Salad
I love House of Prime Rib in San Francisco because it’s like time-machining yourself back half a century. Their prime rib comes in a silver blimp and you get a whole little shaker of martini, and the salad gets dressed and spinned over ice by a man in a chef’s hat, then doled to you with great bravado. But unlike some other good-for-the-old-timey-ambience, less-for-the-food San Francisco establishments (looking at you, Tadich Grill), the food is both nostalgic and delicious. I am obsessed with their retro spinning salad, not least of all because it is EGGY.
Makes 4 servings
2 handfuls 1-inch torn pieces romaine lettuce
2 handfuls 1-inch torn pieces iceberg lettuce
1 handful watercress leaves
1 roasted or canned beet, cut into matchsticks
1 tomato, chopped
1 Hard-Boiled Egg, chopped
½ cup sourdough croutons
about ¼ cup Steakhouse Dressing, more or less to taste (recipe follows)
+ freshly ground black pepper
1. Place the salad greens in a large salad bowl. Arrange the beets and tomato over the greens and sprinkle the egg on top. Top with the croutons.
2. Pour the steakhouse dressing over the greens, and use your hands to toss well. Add more dressing if it needs it. To serve, heap high on plates and grind fresh pepper all over.
Steakhouse Dressing
Makes about 1 cup
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry sherry
1½ tsp Lawry’s seasoned salt
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp sugar
½ tsp Hungarian sweet paprika
1 tbsp chopped parsley or 1 tsp dried
½ tsp mustard powder
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
¼ cup olive oil
1. In a blender, combine everything but the olive oil. Blend on high until smooth.
2. With the motor running, slowly add the oil through the lid’s hole until combined. Refrigerate until serving.
Arpège Egg
Chef Alain Passard’s Arpège egg, the chaud-froid oeuf (hot-cold egg), is THE most famous egg in the Western restaurant world—widely imitated, never duplicated…though here’s a recipe, anyway. At L’Arpège in Paris, the egg comes at any point Passard decides, if at all, during a meal so abundant and many-coursed that Eli, my delicate, all-things-in-moderation boyfriend, was shaken to his very core, beyond repair. This is the egg from my wildest dreams: tantalizingly warm-yolked yet cold-white-d, splashed with maple syrup and vinegary cream, served in a silver stand with a little silver spoon, and flawless.
Makes 4 eggs
¼ cup heavy cream
¾ tsp sugar
½ tsp sherry vinegar
4 eggs
4 tsp maple syrup
+ salt
1 tbsp minced chives
+ freshly ground black pepper
1. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and heat the oven to 400°F.
2. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Incorporate the sugar and sherry vinegar right at the end. Transfer the whipped cream to a pastry bag outfitted with a smallish (about ½-inch-diameter) tip (fluted, if you want to get fancy). This will hold in the refrigerator for a few hours.
3. Cut the tops off the eggs. You’ll want to take off around a sixth of the narrower end of the shell. If you have the skills and a sharp-enough blade, more power to you, do it with a paring knife. Otherwise buy a good-quality egg topper online and use that. Gently dump the contents of the eggs out into a small bowl and even more gently use your finger to remove all the white and gooey stuff left inside the eggshell. Separate the yolks from the whites and return the yolks to their shells. (Save the whites for another use, like making meringue, this page.)
4. Place the eggshells in ovenproof eggcups. Add 1 teaspoon of maple syrup and a pinch of salt to each eggshell. Arrange the eggcups in a shallow baking pan. Fill with about 1 inch of very hot water and place on the upper rack of the oven. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes. The goal is to warm the yolks, to give them some body and make them a little bit more unctuous, not to cook or poach them completely.
5. Remove the eggs from the pan and fill each with whipped cream. The finished egg should have a peak of piped cream rising out of the top of the eggshell like the snowcap on a mountain. Scatter that snowcap with a pinch or two of minced chives and a twist of freshly ground black pepper. Serve at once.
Arzak Egg
The lovely and generous Nadine Redzepi, who’s married to René Redzepi of the lauded Noma in Copenhagen, maintains a ridiculously beautiful Instagram of the things she cooks for her family. Every once in a while she’ll post a photo of eggs as little bundles—eggs she’s poached in plastic wrap, a technique that’s the signature of Spanish chef Juan Mari Arzak. I emailed to ask her why she likes making Arzak eggs, and she wrote: “The main reason is the amount of seasoning and flavor that you can wrap in to the egg because it’s in the cling film. When I poach eggs the traditional way I lose half of the egg white. This way there’s no waste. Another of my favorite reasons for Arzak eggs is you can make a lot of them at the same time so easily. We are 6 people in our family so being able to make 8 to 10 eggs at the same time really means something. :) Our favorite thing to eat at home is roasted chicken and we always make stock with the toasted bones after. Two poached eggs in there is amazing! Sometimes I’ll save the chicken fat from the roasting pan (that the roasted chicken was in) and put a spoonful of that in with the egg. Sometime herbs go in there too, it kind of depends on what I have around and what I’m going to eat the eggs with. Every time I make them it also makes me think of Juan Mari, and that puts a smile on my face.”
Makes 1 to 4 eggs
+ olive oil
1 to 4 eggs
+ salt
1. Drape a large square of plastic wrap over a shallow bowl. It should extend well beyond the edges of the bowl. Brush the plastic with olive oil to keep the egg from sticking to the wrap.
2. Crack an egg into the center of the bowl. Sprinkle it with salt. Gather the ends of the plastic wrap together and twist them closed. You’ll end up with a bulbous balloon with a raw egg in it, and a loose cord of plastic wrap. Tightly tie a foot-long piece of kitchen twine around the plastic-wrap cord, just above the egg, sealing it off. Trim off the wrap above the twine. Repeat for each egg.
3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then drop it down to a simmer. Lower the eggs into the pot. Tie the twine to a chopstick or ladle laid across the top of the pot to make sure the eggs are suspended about halfway into the water—they shouldn’t touch the bottom. Simmer for 4 minutes 20 seconds.
4. To finish, remove the eggs from the heat and transfer them to a cutting board. Let the eggs sit for a minute or so, then carefully cut off the plastic wrap. Deploy at will.
BEYOND the Plate: Eggs in Medicine, Art, and Winemaking
Bridget Huber
Semen Extender
Whether issued by an anonymous donor or a prize stallion, the semen used for artificial insemination needs to be preserved until it reaches its intended target, usually by chilling or freezing. But that can hurt the little swimmers, which may be poisoned by toxic by-products that semen itself creates as it ages, or damaged by freezing and thawing. So semen extenders—often made from yolks—are added to the mix to protect and nourish the sperm until their fateful rendezvous with the egg.
Flu Vaccine
Each year, over a billion chicken eggs are used to make the flu vaccine. A tiny needle injects the live virus into a laboratory-grade fertile egg, where the virus multiplies for a few days. Then, the teeming liquid is mechanically sucked from the shell and inactivated. It’s mixed with the other strains of flu virus destined for that year’s shot and injected into deltoids everywhere.
Tempera Paint
From ancient Egypt to the late Renaissance, most artists painted with egg tempera, generally made by mixing yolk, pigment, and a liquid like water, vinegar, or wine. Tempera has to be applied in thin layers on smooth surfaces, but, unlike oil paint, its vivid colors don’t darken over time. Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus was painted in egg tempera, Michelangelo used it for his panel paintings, and monks used a version made with egg whites to illuminate manuscripts. When oil paint hit the scene in the 1500s it mostly displaced egg tempera, but not entirely: Marc Chagall and Andrew Wyeth were egg tempera devotees and it’s still used to paint Orthodox icons.
Fining Agent
Winemakers use “fining agents” to clarify wines and temper astringency and bitterness. Egg whites are one of the most common—usually at a dose of 1 to 5 egg whites per 60 gallons of wine. The whites are said to give red wines a softer taste and their proteins bind with the tiny particles that cloud wine to make larger molecules that settle at the bottom. Using lots of whites means you’re left with lots of yolks, and it’s thought that canelés, the custardy, caramelized little cakes, were first made by nuns in Bordeaux with yolks they got from winemakers.
Wound Dressing
Long used in Chinese medicine, eggshell membranes have been studied as a dressing for skin grafts and severe burns and even to patch ruptured eardrums. The membranes are cheap, readily available, and, in some studies, seemed to promote healing and discourage infection or allergic reactions.
Alternative Packaging
Researchers are working to make bioplastics from egg whites that would be an alternative to petroleum-based food packaging and would be biodegradable and antimicrobial to boot.
Antidote
Scientists are working to develop infection-fighting eggs. When a chicken—or any other animal—is exposed to a virus or bacteria, it develops antibodies to it. A hen passes those antibodies to her offspring in the egg, just as a human mother does to a fetus. Scientists have harvested these antibodies—called avian immunoglobulins or IgY— from chicken eggs and successfully used them to provide temporary immunity against a number of bacteria and viruses including salmonella, H. pylori (which can cause ulcers and stomach cancer), norovirus (aka the stomach flu), and gingivitis (causes gum disease); and they may even provide an antidote for snake bites.
Egg Substitute Guide
Agar
Agar is a carbohydrate sourced from sea algae; more specifically, it is a complex mixture of polysaccharides composed of two major fractions: agarose, a neutral polymer, and agaropectin, a charged, sulfated polymer. When mixed with water, agar forms a vast gummy network similar to denatured egg protein. The tangled networks entrap moisture in baking and keep ingredients evenly dispersed.
CONS: It is useful only as a binder. Texturally, agar makes things stiffer and less creamy.
USE: 1 tbsp agar + 1 tbsp water = 1 egg
Applesauce
Moist and high in pectin fiber, apples are somewhat like bananas, and applesauce is a good egg substitute in certain baking applications.
CONS: Applesauce is generally high in sugar; even unsweetened applesauce will have much more sugar than eggs. It is not suitable as a leavener, so your cake will be denser and moister with every egg you replace.
USE: ¼ cup applesauce = 1 egg
Baking Soda and Vinegar
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) reacts with any acidic component to create carbon dioxide, which pushes and expands (and therefore leavens) the matter around it.
CONS: You only want to use this method in recipes with relatively few eggs to replace, to mitigate the vinegar from overwhelming the flavor profile. Baked goods also won’t brown as deeply.
USE: 1 tsp baking soda + 1 tbsp vinegar = 1 egg
Bananas
A very ripe banana’s starch, fiber, and high moisture content make it an effective binder in certain baking applications.
CONS: Bananas are high in sugar, are not an effective leavener, and have a strong flavor.
USE: ½ medium ripe banana = 1 egg
Blood
Blood and egg have similar protein profiles (high in albumen), making it an ideal coagulator/binder. When whipped, blood approximates egg whites very well and is an optimal substitution in things like meringues.
CONS: Blood’s high iron content leads to a sharp metallic taste and strong odor that is offputting to many. Strong aromatic changes can occur in uncastrated pigs due to their production of skatole and androstenone, which women have been shown to be more sensitive to. Some recipes, especially acid-forward ones, mask these qualities better than others.
USE: 65 grams of pig’s blood = 1 egg (about 58 grams), or 43 grams of blood = 1 egg white (about 33 grams)
Buttermilk
The fat and moisture content of buttermilk approximate that of eggs. It contains acid, so can be used as a leavener when combined with baking soda or powder.
CONS: Works best for substitution in single-egg recipes because of its high moisture content and overall flavor profile, which can quickly become fairly overpowering.
USE: ½ cup buttermilk = 1 egg
Chia Seeds
When chia seeds are placed in water, they exude a mucilaginous polysaccharide that surrounds each seed, effectively creating a gel with a binding capability similar to eggs.
CONS: In a recent study, a control cake (containing eggs) favored higher overall on taste, texture, and color among the subjects, compared to cakes with up to 75 percent chia substitution. Again, to be used in moderation: Works most effectively in recipes that call for fewer eggs.
USE: 1 tbsp finely ground seeds + 3 tbsp water = 1 egg
Chickpea Liquid (Aquafaba)
The science of aquafaba is as of yet murky. A community-based webgroup has hypothesized that aquafaba may contain lipids, fatty acids, fibers, mucilage (similar to flax), and proteins (presumably albumins). When whipped, it is a strikingly accurate substitution for making meringues.
CONS: Has a strong beany flavor: best when masked with vanilla or other flavoring.
USE: 3 tablespoons drained canned chickpea liquid (each can yields ½ to ¾ cup) is the equivalent of about 1 egg white
Commercial Egg Replacer
Egg replacers are generally made up of potato starch, tapioca flour, a chemical leavener, and cellulose gum. Cellulose gum is a binder that helps stabilize proteins, improve mouthfeel, and absorb and retain water; the starches and flour also bind and give body.
CONS: Can be used only in baking. Also tends to lend a chalkier taste/texture than eggs and is not as effective at leavening (produces denser texture).
USE: For baking, 1½ tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer + 2 tbsp water = 1 egg; 1½ tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer + 1 tbsp water = 1 egg yolk
Cornstarch/Potato Starch/Arrowroot Flour
When heated in a liquid, starch granules (long chains of plant sugars) swell, absorb water, and burst, dispersing more starch molecules and thereby thickening the liquid.
CONS: Texture and mouthfeel of starches versus eggs can be much gummier and slippier.
USE: 2 tbsp starch + 3 tbsp water = 1 egg
Flaxseed Meal
Flax is a hydrocolloid, meaning it becomes a gel when it’s mixed with water. Hydrocolloids build structure, emulsify, and soften mouthfeel—many things that eggs already do in traditional baking applications. It’s made up of mainly polysaccharides. Because of this, flax gel can work as a mild structure builder, low foaming agent, and emulsifier in vegan baking applications. Flax gel is able to do all three without imparting off-flavors, colors, or textures when it is used properly.
CONS: Eggs rely on proteins to do most of their work and flaxseeds use polysaccharides, so the results will not be exactly the same. Flaxseed egg replacer is not a terrific foaming agent. That means it’s next to impossible to use it to make extremely airy desserts like angel food cake, choux pastry, or popovers. In fact, flaxseed egg replacer can even do more harm than good in cakes because of its tendency to hold on to excess moisture. It also is not a structure builder in that it won’t form protein networks that reinforce doughs the way an egg will. It will work to stick things together instead.
USE: (1) Use the whole ground flaxseed meal dispersed in a liquid such as water, nondairy milk, or fruit juice and use it after it forms into a gel. (2) Make flax gel. Boil whole flaxseeds with water, which extracts the gel, strain the flax gel, then discard the flaxseeds.
Gelatin
Gelatin is made up of collagen molecules, which help hold together connective tissue in bone/muscles. Collagen is made up of three individual protein chains wound closely together in a helix to make a rope-like fiber. When heated in liquid, the individual protein chains come apart and dissolve into the liquid. The unwound, separate chains are what we call gelatin. As the liquid they are dispersed in cools, the collagen molecules begin to re-form their wound shape, essentially entangling all other molecules in a web, creating an emulsion.
CONS: Higher protein content, slippier mouthfeel when replacing 4 or more eggs. Cannot be used as a leavener. Not vegan!
USE: To replace 3 or 4 eggs, use 4 tbsp water + 1 tbsp gelatin. But, if replacing only 1 or 2 eggs, use 3 tbsp water + 1 tbsp gelatin.
Soy Lecithin
Lecithin is a phospholipid found in eggs; when replacing eggs with soy lecithin (or any other isolated lecithin), you are substituting like for like. Phospholipids resemble triglycerides (fat) except that a phosphate group replaces one of the fatty acids. Since phosphates are polar (water-soluble) and fatty acids are fat-soluble, phospholipids connect water and fats. Lecithin is a good emulsifier.
CONS: Most ideal for emulsions and foams in low quantities in instances where you don’t want to impart egginess into the flavor profile. Can be “chemical-y” in large quantity.
USE: To make a lecithin foam, take a flavorful liquid and whisk or blend in the lecithin. It is typically used at a ratio of 0.25% to 1.0% by weight to the liquid. So, for example, for 100 grams of liquid, 0.25 to 1 gram of soy lecithin would be used. For the stabilization of emulsions, lecithin is added at a weight ratio of 0.3% to 1.0%, depending on how stabilized you want the emulsion to be.
Tofu
Tofu contains lecithin, which aids emulsification. Soy is a complete protein (provides all the necessary amino acids) and cholesterol free and thus a health-foodier replacement for many savory egg dishes.
CONS: Can lead to much heavier, denser cake texture. Most ideal for binding.
USE: ¼ cup (2 oz) silken tofu = 1 egg
