Eggs

Why hating eggs is such an issue.

I don't eat anything containing eggs, except certain things for which raw eggs are mixed with flour and other ingredients and then baked in an oven. These exceptions are:

When I was a small boy, my father kept chickens in order to have available plenty of fresh eggs, because people endured shortages in wartime (see my biography). It was therefore a terrible disappointment to him (which I admit he took very well, probably because my younger brothers showed no signs of sharing my dislike) when, faced on Easter morning when I was four years old with a boiled egg, of which my mother had painted the shell some garish colour, I announced that I didn't actually like eggs.

From that day to this, my attitude to eggs hasn't changed: I still find eggs of all kinds, however cooked, utterly repellent. Just the thought of them, whether still separated as with a fried (USA “sunny side up”) or not (as when “scrambled”) makes me nauseous. The smell of eggs being cooked and eaten for breakfast has always made me want to leave the building until the whole thing is well and truly over and the air inside has been replaced several times. I have very rarely been around other people at breakfast time for many years now, thank goodness, but my reaction is still the same.

Who’s the momma?

Generally, in the food context, the undifferentiated term “egg” is (of course) a hen's egg, in other words, that of the chicken species Gallus gallus domesticus (the domesticated fowl). To me the goose egg would just be a larger example of the same. I would certainly not go anywhere near a turtle egg (they are also eaten by humans in some places) and the same applies to fish eggs, even when sold at absurd prices as a black gloop called caviar.

Presumption for breakfast

There's an American song (about kisses at breakfast time: ugh!) that begins “How do you like your eggs in the morning?” and when it was used recently in a TV advertisement I found myself instantly disgusted all over again at the assumption by so many people not only that everybody eats eggs at all, but also that they always eat them for breakfast. A cousin I visited when in my forties put a boiled egg in front of me without asking whether I wanted one, and looked pained when I pointed out that I don't eat them. I don't blame the cousin particularly: it's the way of the world. Indeed, some boarding house landladies, and diner waitresses in America, seem (if we are to judge by the movies) to tell their guests that breakfast is eggs, and that their only choice in the matter is how they want them cooked. In Britain these methods are termed boiled, scrambled, in an omelette, or just fried, though (as I already mentioned) in the USA some sick humorist coined a phrase that's still widely used for the last of these: “sunny side up”.

Egg fry-ups

I hate all the ways of cooking eggs as a dish but, if any, I find the fried ones most abhorrent of all. My second brother, born a year after my Easter announcement, has grown up a gourmet of sorts, and I remember him as a boy, when I still lived with the family, cooking massive fried breakfasts including platters of fried eggs or omelettes of such magnitude that I really did have to leave the house for a couple of hours until the whole ghastly affair was over and the air cleared.

Chinese “special fried rice”

The same applies to a Chinese menu item very misleadingly called “special fried rice” which, as I once discovered to my disgust when, as part of a collective take-away order by some friends, it was ordered for me instead of plain boiled rice, is tantamount to a crumbled-up rice omelette. In my view, all Chinese restaurants and take-aways in the world should be prosecuted to within an inch of their bank accounts until they stop using this almost irrelevant description of what is really an egg dish, not rice.

Eggs in sauces

I mentioned hollandaise sauce under TV chefs, and mayonnaise is equally disgusting. Basically it consists of raw egg, oil, and vinegar,mixed together; and it is hard to think of anything more disgusting to me that is so all-pervasive as mayonnaise.

People put mayonnaise in sandwiches and don't even tell you. Years ago, after making this discovery, whenever I was offered a sandwich, I began to ask very carefully what it contained. Typically, at this point, people just say “chicken” or even “smoked salmon”. One must then ask “anything else? Like butter?” and they may say “butter” or “sunflower spread” but I then say “OK, chicken and sunflower spread, and nothing else?” and I have learned not to be surprised, though (if hungry) I am still sometimes dismayed, when they then say “oh, just a little mayo”.

Many of them really have no concept that what they nearly didn't bother to tell me is what makes it impossible for me to accept one of those sandwiches however hungry I might be.

Soufflé

A young Englishman I worked with in Germany around 1980 once tried to put one over on me. His equally young wife (they were both about 20, I just over 30) was a keen cook and he invited me to dinner at their flat. I had told him I did not eat anything made of eggs and he apparently saw this as a challenge. He told me after the main course that the dessert was a special kind of sponge cake. He brought it slightly ceremoniously something that his wife had made, gave me a helping and as they ate theirs watched my reaction. I ate some cautiously and found it horrible. He asked if I'd like some more and I firmly declined, and then admitted that it was evident I had not liked it at all and that it was actually a soufflé — and this is how I know I hate that too, because I would never have asked for it, even if I ever encountered it at all, otherwise. He had learnt his lesson and they remained friends of mine although they separated and went separate ways eventually, he settling in America and she in England. So, I forgave this chap his attempt to fool me (into admitting I didn't dislike an egg dish); after all, he had at least proved that I was right all along.

But I do use eggs

After this, you might suppose I have no use whatever for eggs, but I do actually buy them occasionally: I need them when making cakes, and in the past I used sometimes to make a “toad-in-the-hole”, which is essentially a Yorkshire pudding with pork or beef sausages embedded in it and cooked by the baking which bakes the batter.

The formula

Being a mathematician and physicist, and given these two uses which I have made of eggs (only hens' eggs), I concluded that there is a rule — a formula — for my use of them: each egg must be beaten, and then combined while raw with at least 50g (or 2 ounces, approximately) of flour per egg, and then baked. This covers almost all cake recipes as well as the only batter recipe I ever used which calls for one (medium or large) egg, 3 ounces (75g) of flour and 5 fluid ounces of milk (or milk and water). The “1, 3, 5” proportions in old British imperial cooking units was a mnemonic. I can convert (I use a metric kitchen scales) but I don't often use recipe books when cooking familiar things.