Teaching Your Grandma to Cube Eggs
Happiness is Egg Shaped. Words by Jack and Angelos, illustration by Lena.
Until the moment it is broken, wrote the American food writer M.F K. Fisher, the egg is ‘probably one of the most private things in the world.’ Before the first crack ‘its secrets are its own.’
Yet each generation, it seems, finds its own way of disturbing this privacy, reshaping the humble egg in its own warped image. In the sixteenth century Christopher Colombus challenged himself to balance a lightly boiled egg on the table, a feat nobody else, apparently, could achieve. He crushed the bottom and declared that this was exactly the kind of innovative thinking that led to his discovery of the ‘new world.’ This apocryphal story is supposed to be a tale about individual vision - an allegory of the ‘Great Man Theory of History’ - but whether it was ‘discovering’ a continent or balancing an egg, Columbus’ findings seem to be more bravado than breakthrough.
Fast forward 4oo years and the British government’s recently created ‘Egg Marketing Board’ began printing an image of a small red lion onto the surface of the egg itself (the trademark was revived in the 1990s in an attempt to tackle Salmonella). Set up in 1956, the board was a large-scale experiment in semi-nationalised agriculture - it purchased all eggs produced in the UK and sold them to retailers after organising them in terms of quality and price. In its fifteen year existence the board spent £12 million on advertising, enrolling Tony Hancock, Bernard Miles, Patricia Hayes, and George Best in a series of TV commercials aiming to convince the public to ‘go to work on an egg’. Across a series of surreal adverts the message is clear - the egg is everything, and everything is the egg: ‘Success is egg-shaped’ ; ‘Variety is egg-shaped’ ; ‘Vitality is egg-shaped.’
In one of the later ads Hancock appears to be haunted by the commercials themselves, fearing he may have sold his soul to the Egg Marketing Board. Awaking bleary eyed, he stumbles around his house, confronted by adverts at every turn. ‘Eggs for Breakfast’ is graffitied in bold letters across his bedroom carpet. ‘Eggs is Easy! ‘Eggs are Cheap! ‘Eggs are full of Protein!’, read a series of increasingly irritating slogans plastered across pieces of domestic furniture. As Hanock enters the kitchen and turns round to the stove to cook his breakfast, the board’s boldest claim is printed across his dressing gown - ‘Happiness is Egg Shaped.’
For the chef Alain Passard, flavour itself is egg-shaped. The Arpege egg is his gift to the world, sometimes considered to be “the perfect bite”. Private no more, the egg is meticulously decapitated before being dismantled and put back together with additional ingredients, playfully highlighting contrasting textures, temperatures, and flavours.
The Yolk is Warm
The Cream is Cold
The Chives are Savoury
The Syrup is Sweet
The Arpege works because it’s just so simple. Just as Christopher Colombus proved his worth using a hard boiled egg, Passard showed the world how to undress an egg and return it as one, both the same and different, a Schrödinger egg if you will.
Through a series of weird and wacky kitchen gadgets, eggs have shamefully been inverted, elongated into logs, cubed, homogenized, and even partially unboiled from a cooked state. Online you can find one "Rollie Eggmaster" for £9.99, a vertical grill that "excretes tube-shaped cooked eggs". Under Why Buy Me? "Make Omelettes on a stick". Can't argue with that.
The egg, it seems, is a blank canvas upon which people project their desires.
In the egg, Colombus saw his own genius.
In the egg, Tony Hancock saw the loss of professional integrity.
In the egg, Alain Passard saw the laws of flavour.
In the egg, Rollie producer Kedem LLC saw the potential for an omelette on a stick.
A recipe? The Kalles Combo
This is a classic Swedish smörgås (open sandwich) egg combo, often eaten at breakfast. I like to eat this on Rye and Lingonberry bread, or Lithuanian dark rye.
Toast the bread well, spread with too much unsalted butter. Then spread Kalles fish paste just to coat, and top with a hard boiled egg sliced thickly. Finish with plenty of black (or white) pepper. Eat in the morning with a strong black coffee.
If you can, do cube your eggs.
Kitchen Scraps
- gave me an eggy bite one day at work and I thought it was amazing. The perfect mouthful. God knows where it came from. Fudgy eggs, torn in half, topped with flaked salt, some grated fresh ginger, a smidge of soft butter, and healthy lashings of hot (or not) Maggi.
Salted egg yolk fish skin crisps. These are some of the best crips about. From what I can tell, the Irvins brand can only be purchased in Singapore, but Wing Yip Cricklewood (and a few other spots) have adequate alternatives.
Hunan Golden Coin Fried Eggs - another video by
, and a favourite midweek dinner of mine
The clown egg registry. Since the 1940s professional clowns have recorded their unique makeup designs on to eggs as a means of informal copyright. Dalston’s Trinity House Church was, until recently, home to a large collection. Clowns are also egg shaped.
‘Go down to the ironmonger and buy me a pound of egg meat.’ Ivor Cutler - Egg Meat
Love this :)