thinker shells? The rare impossible to determine 50/50 typo.
When I get eggs from an amateur hen keeper, the shells are usually thinner than store bought. Taste better too.
Eh, we’ve all been caught with egg on our face at some point.
mmm
I lived in China for two years and all chicken eggs were brown.
I noticed ZERO difference from what white eggs had tasted like growing up.
Milk was a lot different, though. Much worse in my opinion.
Is there, however, a difference between white free range eggs and brown free range eggs? Or white store bought eggs and brown store bought eggs?
The only time I’ve noticed a distinct difference in the taste of eggs is when I’ve been able to get really fresh eggs from a roadside stand or from a neighbor who has hens. The yolks were more orange than yellow (probably from diet) and the flavor seemed richer.
Even then, if you do something like use the eggs in a cake or something else, you’re probably not going to notice the difference. If you’re going to the trouble and expense of getting free-range or organic or backyard eggs, you probably should do something to let the taste of the eggs show.
Nope, it just so happens that people with years of finding out that “common sense items” like: different parts of your tongue detects different tastes (False), People use just 10 per cent of their brain (False), Handling a baby bird will make its mother reject it (False) All statues and buildings in Ancient Greece and Rome where plain white (nope, very colorful in ancient times) and many others are many times shot down by evidence that a lot of people do miss.
The color of eggs thing has also been looked at by researchers before:
So, the color is not a sure way to know. Then what about the apparent color differences inside the eggs? Even on that there is a lot of personal bias that is a part of the apparent taste differences.
The experiments at the Labs at Serious Eats, point that even the taste thing is a subjective thing, so in reality there is not a significant difference between brown or white eggs (or the slight color differences inside too) taste. Just look for how fresh the eggs are and how better chickens are treated and fed.
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Since this appears to have been prompted by a column, let’s move it to the Comments forum.
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My mom raises chickens. When she gets a new batch every year or two, she always alternates brown and white breeds, so she can tell which ones are laying. Her hens aren’t completely free-range, but they’re close (an enclosed outdoor area), and their eggs, no matter the color, are delicious.
I don’t think you’ll get much argument that eggs from well-treated hens (diet, lifestyle, etc) are much better than factory-farmed supermarket eggs. It’s just that that has no relation to color.
I buy free-range organic blue eggs from roadside stands when I’m in Maine. I’m not sure what the breed is; maybe they’re just extremely large robins.
Had eggs that were swiped out from under a chicken just before breakfast. They were great, I never saw the shells. Turns out my friend felt that she needed to let the eggs “rest” a few days before using them for baking. She said they took forever to set up, and stuff would fall flat. Eggs from egg factories are sometime four or five months old when they get to the store. That seems to be changing, except in the summer, when chickens lay less.
Pola…I mean, person with ancestry from Central Europe! 
Did you draw patterns with wax that wouldn’t take the dye? I remember that in Scholastic magazine, or whatever the Catholic version was. There was a recipe for a beautiful maroon dye made from beets, but I didn’t mention it lest dropmom (German/Bohemian) thought I wanted to eat beets.
Yep, you got it. Didn’t quite come out as nicely as real pisanki made with beeswax as the dye resist and a pin head or similar application tool, but, hey, for a little kid it was good enough.
Eggs are routinely brown in the UK. White’s not unheard of, but it’s not at all common. Basically, an egg is a brown thing to me. I know white used to be marginally more available than that here, but not for decades. I think of white eggs as being a pretty exclusively North American thing…but last week I picked up a box of white eggs from a supermarket. They look so weird! Like…i don’t know, like you met someone whose skin was coloured like the Simpsons’. Something you’ve seen thousands of times on TV, but freakish in real life.
They taste pretty unremarkable though. Just eggs.
Since Science has spoken already, I will just say that my free range (truly free, they’d come into the kitchen if I didn’t have a screen door) hens, always lay eggs with much harder thicker shells than market eggs, even organic “free range” omega-3-infused brown market eggs. This is because they eat a lot of small creeping things which add calcium to their diets. Even supplementing with oyster shell like most home flock-keepers doesn’t have the same effect. Brown or white they make the best psyanky bases because they are so sturdy.
We made psyanky eggs during Lent for years, gave them away at the Easter Vigil Mass. It was fun.
When I was a kid in Maine in the 50s, eggs were brown, period. White eggs were to be found only in strange, far-off lands like Brooklyn.
I have heard brown shelled eggs are more nutritious than white-shelled eggs. Has anyone heard it before? However, I’ve never felt any difference between the taste between them.
Some of the posts mention greater prevalence of brown eggs, which is in line with my experience. According to Cecil’s column, brown-egg-laying hens are costlier to maintain because they eat more. Seems contradictory.
Y’all were just going to let this bit slide? Where, outside a Dr. Suess book or Easter egg hunt, are you getting green eggs?