Serious Eats
Snapshots from the UK: British Blue Eggs
Easter is not long behind us, and I only have one comment on the matter: there is a reason why dying and dyeing sound exactly the same. All I ever get for my troubles are stained fingers and cracked shells. If the Easter Bunny is so magical, why can’t he just make a line of pastel-perfect eggs appear in the supermarket?
As it turns out, in the UK, he does. Or rather, Clarence Court delivers a happy rainbow of colorful eggs to the Sainsbury’s down the road. Not only did Britain get Cadbury Creme Eggs first, but now British blue eggs.
We are used to hens laying eggs in just two colors: white, and brown. Chic, perhaps, but also a bit drab. I only recently learned that the color of the egg was not a result of any particular process, but depended on the hen herself. "Brown" hens lay brown eggs; “white” lay white.
But several hundred years ago, missionaries to South America noticed that not only was the culture colorful; so were the eggs. In the 1920s, English hens met and married their colorful Chilean cousins, and the result was the Old Cotswold Legbar breed, which readily and naturally produces eggs hued in bright light blue, pink, green, turquoise, peach, and olive.
Finally, Easter is no longer tinged with bloody red dye. I would love to serve a festive omelet bar and offer not only a cheese selection, but a rainbow of eggs as well. The color of the eggs in the photograph are tinged green by the light of my camera, but as still life, they are an eggshell-delicate shade of sky. They are beautiful.
I love a bird with some style, and these ethically-treated hens produce an egg that I am proud to stuff into my basket—at Easter, or at the supermarket.
Related
Exotic Eggs Available at Whole Foods [SENY]
Eggs- organic vs. cage free? [Talk]
Cooking with Quail Eggs [Talk]