Mr. Athena claims that the “large” eggs of today are smaller than the “large” eggs of his childhood. As far as I know, the size labels on eggs are set by the USDA, by weight.
Can anyone tell me if the weight categories have changes since, say, the early 60s? I found this document which indicates on page 11 that there were previous documents that talked about egg sizes, but I can’t find any of those documents on line. I’ve also found mention of “egg scales” from the 1940s that have the same sizes as modern eggs.
As all you married dopers surely know, it’s imperative that I prove Mr. Athena wrong. Help me out!
Actually it doesn’t make much difference what size eggs you buy as they are really sold by the pound and not by the dozen. By that I mean that if there are a dozen eggs weighing 3 oz each they will cost 1.5 times as much as a dozen eggs weighing 2 oz each. In point of fact you get a little less egg in the smaller ones because their shells are just as thick as the bigger ones so the percentage of shell is just a tad greater.
I think the names have been changed to protect the innocent. In the 30’s eggs were small, medium, and large. The size then, as now, being determined by how much a dozen of them weighed. The tendency appears to be that stores carry the larger sizen, which are realley no bigger than eggs with smallers size names used to be. After all who would want to buy a dozen eggs marked “Puny, Grade A” when they were near eggs marked “Extra Jumbo, Grade A.”? But as I said, what size you buy makes no real difference in how much you are spending on eggs. However, for psychological reasons most of the eggs classified as smaller than “Large” are sold to commercial bakers, etc.
Good answers, but I’m looking for something more definitive, like a link to an egg scale from the 1950s, or a copy of the 1967 USDA Egg Category paper. Anyone?
Here’s a decent photo of an old egg scale from up to around the 1940s (I don’t know the exact date, but another antiques site has one for sale and says it’s pre-1940s).
The black scale on the left is oz/dozen; the red scale on the right is oz/egg. In case you can’t make out the lettering, the ranges are as follows: