WHEN MEGHAN MARKLE and Prince Harry welcomed Oprah to their secluded Montecito, Calif., estate last month, one revelation piqued my interest—and it wasn’t what topped the tabloids the next day. Apparently the Sussexes recently added a backyard chicken coop—aka “Archie’s Chick Inn”—to their family compound. Royals: They’re just like us!
No, really. Surely you recall the toilet paper shortage and yeast crisis, but did you know that 2020 was also the year Americans hoarded hens? Last spring hatcheries around the country reported unprecedented sales driven by amateur homesteaders restless from lockdown and panicky about food insecurity. If early signs are an indication, this year is shaping up to be nearly as intense. “Things are still crazy right now,” said Phil Tompkins, who, along with his wife, Jenn, owns Rent the Chicken. This Pennsylvania-based backyard chicken outfitter has locations in 28 states and 2 Canadian provinces, some of which have already sold out completely for the 2021 season. Is it any coincidence that, according to Google Trends, searches for “how to cook eggs’’ hit their all-time peak last year?
But if 2020 was all about DIY homesteaders and weary cooks embracing eggs as the perfect pandemic pantry staple—frugal, high-protein meal stretchers made for leaning on in hard times—this spring, as we inch tentatively back toward normalcy in and out of the kitchen, it seems only fitting to celebrate this ingredient’s more sumptuous side. Sure, scrambled eggs may stave off the wolf, but haven’t we all had enough of mere survival?
Julia Child called the egg a “perfect, pristine, primal object.” Few foodstuffs constitute such a culinary miracle. (Did you know that eggs contain every nutrient needed to sustain life except for vitamin C?) Indeed, thanks to the binary nature of the yolk and the white, the egg is really two separate ingredients in one, each with its own properties and potential—to thicken custards, enrich sauces, leaven cakes and more. Soufflé, crème brûlée, quiche, mayonnaise, meringue: None of these delights (nor dozens of others) would be possible without the egg’s peculiar alchemy.
Anyone who’s ever painted an Easter egg or placed a hard-boiled egg on the seder plate knows that the deep symbolic association of eggs with vernal rebirth and renewal is a cultural thread that weaves around the globe and deep into prehistory. According to Lisa Steele, an author, egg authority and 5th-generation chicken whisperer based in Dixmont, Maine, it’s also a plain biological fact. Most hens require 12 to 16 hours of daylight to lay reliably. The more light there is, the more productive chickens are; a flock that might yield nothing all winter can churn out a dozen or more a day come June. (No wonder Harry and Meghan sent Oprah home with a to-go bag.) To fill the stacks of cartons one sees year-round in the supermarket, industrial growers rely on artificial light and other manipulative farming practices. But in nature eggs are as much a seasonal crop as springtime delights like ramps or morels, and just as deserving of our adulation.
