Recently, someone gave me a dozen duck eggs, and I had never seen or eaten them before. Instead of using them for breakfast, I decided to put some of them into my low-carb rustic bread recipe. This recipe, which I have made dozens of times, calls for five chicken eggs.
When I opened the carton, I was surprised by their size and assumed I should use fewer than five. Googling the conversion factor, I found a few different answers, and I’m concerned that the dough will be too wet if I use four, or too dry if I only use three. What do you recommend? Please don’t tell me to use 3 1/2 duck eggs, as I have no idea how to evenly split an egg into two.
An egg, as a unit of measure, is metrologically meaningless, anyway. Commercially, egg ingredients are weighed. Chicken eggs are so variable, they’re sold in, what, five or six different sizes. Of course, egg W:Y content ratios are unreliable, too. How many double yolk eggs till the bread is ruined? A size or two up or down probably won’t change much. A rough 3:2 chicken:duck is as good a guess as any.
I just learned of a German expression like ‘the yolk of the egg’ to mean bullseye or ‘right on the money.’
I’m a little surprised you can’t buy duck or goose eggs in grocery stores, but I assume it’s because there isn’t enough demand, and as a result, they would cost much more than chicken eggs do.
They’re definitely a specialty item. When I was still in Seattle, there was this little shop in the Pike Place Market that sold all kinds of poultry eggs, from quail to goose. They could even get ostrich eggs if you gave them some advance notice.
Since the question has been answered, I’ll add my 2¢, but not about duck eggs.
I local farm raises emus, and once when I was there I asked about emu eggs. He said that they do sell them when they’re available. I think they were three or four bucks each, but he also informed me that aside from being larger “They don’t have any special taste, and you can’t tell them from chicken eggs.”
I’ve heard the same thing said about Ostrich eggs, although I don’t know from personal experience. It makes sense since you would expect all bird eggs to be made up of the same basic stuff, but perhaps in different proportions.
Hmm, never thought about that. I would drive quite a long way for fresh emu eggs, just for the novelty.
I’ve tried deviled ostrich egg, it wasn’t anything special except looked very-sortamuch like a humanoid skull with spoons sticking out to portion the creamy goo inside.
As to dividing an egg in half, couldn’t it be done after whisking it? I’d imagine one could whisk together the usual amount of chicken eggs and measure the volume and do the same for duck eggs. Easier than trying to divide a yolk and albumen.
Food metrology: No, because the volume is heavily influenced by the air whisked in. You don’t want your whisking technique to play into the conversion. Weight is the way.
It’ll be close enough. Plus all your egg should have equal amounts, roughly, of air beaten into it so it shouldn’t matter. Plus you can beat them in a way to minimize air incorporated. Weight is ideal, but I find baking to be far more forgiving than most people make it out to be. It doesn’t have to be precise on a molecular level.
