Eggs

We were curious how eggs from different sources might stack up when tasted side-by-side. Despite marketing hype to the contrary, a kitchen taste-test proved that shell color has no effect on flavor. Brown eggs and white eggs from similar sources taste the same.

But what about organic or farm-fresh eggs? To find out, we put the following four varieties to the test by cooking each sunny-side up: farm-fresh eggs (less than a week old), Egg Innovations organic eggs (“free roaming”), Eggland’s Best brand eggs from hens raised on vegetarian feed (the labels says these eggs are guaranteed to possess “25% less saturated fat than regular eggs” and “100 mg of omega 3 fatty acids”), and standard supermarket eggs.

The farm-fresh eggs were standouts from the get-go. The large yolks were shockingly orange and sat very high above the comparatively small white. Their flavor was exceptionally rich and complex. The organic eggs followed in second place, with eggs from hens raised on a vegetarian diet in third and the standard supermarket eggs last.

Our conclusion?
If you have access to eggs fresh from the farm, by all means buy them; they are a special treat. Otherwise, organic eggs are worth the premium – about a dollar more than standard supermarket eggs – especially if you frequently eat them on their own or in simple recipes such as an omelet.

Getting It Right: Egg Sizes

Eggs come in six sizes – jumbo, extra-large, large, medium, small, and peewee. Most markets carry only the top four sizes – small and peewee are generally reserved for commercial use. There’s little mystery about size – the bigger the chicken, the bigger the egg. All of our recipes are tested with large eggs, but substitutions are possible when large quantities of eggs are used.

See the chart for help in making accurate calculations. For example, four jumbo eggs are equivalent to five large eggs because their weight (10 ounces) is the same.

Egg sizes and weights

We also wondered how freshness affected flavor. Egg cartons are marked with both sell-by and “pack dates” (the latter is a three number code printed just below the sell-by date and it runs consecutively from 001, for January 1, to 365, for December 31). The sell-by date is the legal limit to which eggs may be sold and is within 30 days of the pack date. The pack date is the day the eggs were graded and packed, which is generally within a week of being laid but, legally, may be as much as 30 days.

In short, a carton of eggs may be up two months old by the end of the sell-by date. Even so, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they are still fit for consumption three to five weeks past the sell-by date. The dates, then, are by no means an exact measure of an egg’s freshness; they provide vague guidance at best.

So how old is too old? We tasted two- and three-month-old eggs that were perfectly palatable, though at four months, the white was very loose and the yolk “tasted faintly of the refrigerator” – though it was still edible.

Our advice? Use your discretion: if the egg smells odd or displays discoloration, pitch it. Older eggs also lack the structure-lending properties of fresh eggs, so beware when baking. Both the white and yolk becomes looser. We whipped four-month old eggs and found they rapidly deflated.