In the local egg aisle, I see many cartons of Large, fewer Extra Larges, and a handful of Jumbos. Yet, working out the actually ounces of egg product, the Jumbo is actually the best deal (cheaper than the other choices).
I would assume popularity correlates with shelf space. Since the supermarket is assigning a tiny space to Jumbo eggs, I conclude they must be rather unpopular.
Do people need the Large sizes for recipe use? Or they can’t finish off more egg than a Large? Or do people believe all eggs contain the same amount, so they go with the “cheapest” carton?
I based my Jumbo = cheaper calculation from a table on this site:
IIRC from poultry science classes, the reason there are not many Jumbos is because the size of the egg is not some completely scientific and controllable thing, meaning even if you shoot for eggs a certain size, you will still get a high variation. Also, there is a leeway between how big some sizes can be. The bigger the size of the egg, the less leeway you have. So an Extra Large egg could be classified as a Jumbo, but since there are not that many eggs that size to fit them all in the boxes, it is easier for the producer to put it as Extra-large along with more eggs that clearly fit that size.
Other way to look at it is as a bellcurve, in which most eggs that come out of chickens are already sized “Large”. Extra-large and Jumbo eggs are on the far small end of the curve, and are thus fewer of them.
Jumbo eggs are fine for cooking and eating, but some recipes (Cakes especially) are rather sensitive to the amount of moisture in the batter. Using two large eggs would add extra moisture, and unless the cook compensated by reducing other fluids, the cake would be heavier and not rise as well.
The bell curve argument makes sense, but that doesn’t explain the lower price. If consumers liked Jumbo eggs, they wouldn’t be such a bargain… in fact the relative rarity would force prices up.
Are Jumbos cheaper in your area, and do you buy them or avoid them?
I avoid them for the baking reason cited above. When I buy a dozen eggs, I do indeed plan to scramble and hard boil some of them, for which ends the jumbo eggs would be a better deal. But I’m also 90% sure that some of the eggs in that carton will be used for baking, and recipes always call for large eggs. So I buy large eggs.
I always buy the eggs that give me the lowest price per egg shell. Depending on the day, and the store, this can mean that some days I buy mediums, some days, large, some days jumbo.
It has recently come to my attention that jumbo-sized eggs tend to barely fit into the compartments provided in egg cartons, whether pulp or foam.
I once ( about twenty years ago) read in a trivia blurb (possibly from L.M. Boyd, so keep your salt shakers handy) that double-yolked eggs were becoming less commonly found in the average kitchen, because candling and grading people were instructed to cull such eggs to be provided to institutional users (think Sara Lee). I have noticed that I’m getting more double-yolkers lately (one morning last week I cracked two of them).
Interleaving these two subjective observations, I begin to wonder if automation has led to both the gradual elimination of the human egg-grader, and a policy of selling the “abnormally” large eggs to corporations who are just going to scramble them up and dehydrate them for use in a frozen chocolate cake, anyway.
One other observation: the eggs I buy by the eighteen-pack at Costco tend to be jumbos.
Most people think of eggs as being something that come in integer amounts, not in total weight in the carton. After all, you can’t use only part of an egg. And the difference in amount between a large, an extra large, and a jumbo egg when it comes to scrambling, etc. isn’t that much. So per ounce calculations of price value aren’t really helpful in deciding what to buy.
The number of eggs available at the jumbo size to consumers is probably pretty small, both because of the simple fact that you are talking about the upper end of the bell(?) curve, and because institutional users probably prefer to get ahold of jumbo eggs, since they CAN make use of the per ounce savings. For this reason alone, if nothing else, you would expect to see greater supply in the Large size. Add to that the fact that the cook has been trained since day one to use large eggs in any baking recipe, or for that matter even in certain non-baking recipes where fluid amounts are important to regulate, and you have a good reason for the situation.
I, personally, do little baking, so I buy my eggs at least extra-large, jumbo if the price is right.
Two regular eggs for breakfast is enough. If I buy jumbo, I’m either eating more than I have to, throwing eggs out, or storing them to microwave at some other point.
Kinda like soda. I wish I could get an 8 oz. of soda with lunch. I’d gladly pay more per ounce if I could pay less for what I actually want to drink.
It can also be a financial thing: mom needs one egg per child, pretty much regardless of the size of the egg. So buying the cheaper ‘large’ eggs saves a bit of money without reducing the ‘use’ she gets from the dozen.
The same thing happens with fruit: nobody packs a young child’s lunch with half an apple or banana and yet they don’t need and mostly won’t eat all of the huge ones they sell nowadays. Since you pay by the pound, getting the smaller sized ones saves you money, again without impacting your use.
As other’s have said, jumbo eggs screw up baking. I’ll regularly buy two dozen - one for eating alone and one for baking. Buying jumbo is cheaper than buying cartons of egg whites, and there is significantly more white per egg. Large are then used for baking.
In light of this, yesterday I drove about 30 miles to go to a farm to pay about twice as much as normal for a dozen eggs. But, I saw the chickens who laid 'em.
A carton of Jumbo eggs I bought accidentally about two years ago was all double-yolked. I was very surprised! And also a little peeved because, since I throw out the yolk, I was being cheated out of eggwhite.
I usually buy Extra Large eggs, even for baking. Of course, I don’t use the yolk, so I need the extra white to make up the difference.
You know, I cook a lot and bake a reasonable amount. I don’t go through a ton of eggs, but I see my share. I’ve never in all my life seen one with a double yolk. Never thought about it before today.
I used to not be a big egg eater. My saving grace from being overweight is my cholestoral tends to be on the low side; there used to be a time when I might buy and eat two or three dozen eggs in an entire year. And that was stretching it.
In the last two years I have rediscovered the joy of cheesy omlettes, and the quick and filling snack that a couple of hard boiled eggs can be, and the devilish pleasure of deviled eggs during the summertime. Me being a quantity must be synonymous with quality kinda guy, all I buy are jumbos. My eggs are almost exclusively hard-boiled and fried.
I don’t bake often.
Now-- I think you guys have pinpointed the reason why my salmon croquette recipes have been a little off the last couple years. Too much egg!
I had a whole dozen (or nearly all) a few years back and I had 8 out of 12 doubles in the last dozen I bought. It’s quite the thrill for boring folks like me.
