National Egg Day

National Egg Day is on June 3rd in the United States.

Eggs are a very versatile food, and there are both many different types of eggs and many different ways of cooking them. One of the simplest ways of cooking an egg is the boiled egg, whether this is soft boiled with a runny yolk (popular with bread, or toast, "soldiers") or the hardboiled egg with a hard yolk. As well as being cooked by themselves - with other methods including fried, scrambled and poached - eggs, or their separate parts, yolks and whites, are also used as ingredients in many more complicated dishes.

Eggs can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. They are, particularly the whites, an important ingredient in many sweet dessert dishes, such as cakes.

Chicken eggs, which are probably the most common type of egg around, have different colours to their shells, such as white and brown. The shell colour only means that the egg is from a different breed of hen.

Today, free range eggs are often more popular than battery farmed eggs.

National Deviled Egg Day

November 2nd is National Deviled Egg Day in the US.

Deviled eggs (aka devilled eggs and eggs mimosa) have nothing to do with the devil. They are instead a dish that uses hard boiled eggs as its base. These eggs are then peeled and cut in half lengthways. The hard boiled yolk is removed and mixed with other ingredients, and then the mixture is replaced in the space. The "devilled" of the name refers to the spice mixture that was used, devilled being a common term used to refer to spicy foods.

This is an old dish, dating back to Roman times if not longer, and there are variants in many countries. The yolk in devilled eggs is mixed with ingredients, usually including mayonnaise and mustard, and with other possible items including, but not limited to, Worcestershire sauce, ground black pepper, powdered cayenne pepper, vinegar, green olives and caviar but there are many others used. The mixture, once it has been replaced in the egg, is then often topped or dusted with more ingredients, such as paprika.