Apropos of nothing, I’ve been meaning to describe something I’ve found striking about buying eggs here in Tübingen.
Where I buy them: I buy fresh eggs from the farmers markets, not in the supermarket, although that it also possible. In the farmers market, the eggs sit in large crates in the stalls — there must be at least 50 or more on each “sheet” of eggs, which are stacked on top of each other. You tell the person behind the counter how many you want, and which size, and which color (brown or white), and they put them into a smaller takeaway egg carton for you.
But where I buy them isn’t what I find striking.
What color I buy: I once read that brown-shelled and white-shelled eggs taste the same, so I never have a preference for what type I buy at the market.
However, the yolks in all the eggs, whatever their shell color, are orange, not yellow Perhaps they have different varieties of chickens here in Europe that causes this? Or their chicken feed is different? I should look it up at some point, but I haven’t yet. You see, the color of the yolks also isn’t what I find striking here in Tübingen.
How many I buy: You can purchase any number of eggs you want at the markets since they pack them up on the spot for you. I.e., if you order 1-6, you’ll get them in a reusable takeaway cardboard egg carton big enough for 6 eggs.
If you order more than 6, the eggs will come in the standard-size larger carton, that can hold up to 10 eggs.
And now we have come to what I find striking: that carton holds 10 eggs, not 12.
You see, my recollection is that eggs in North America eggs always come in amounts counted in multiples or fractions of a dozen: e.g. you buy a half-dozen eggs, a dozen eggs, a dozen and half eggs, and so on. Now, there’s no particular reason that eggs should be counted that way, of course, and there’s nothing better or worse about having a carton that contains 12 vs. 10 eggs. I just find it funny how these little things strike me as so odd when I run into something different from my unconscious expectation of how they will work.
I mean, you can still buy a dozen eggs here in Germany, they will just come packed in as 2 6-pack cartons, instead of a single 12-pack carton. But really, what’s wrong with that? But it does strike me as odd each time I buy eggs.
BTW, the price per egg —0.21 € (=$0.29) — is the same price per egg, regardless of how many you buy. So, it’s not cheaper by the 10 pack … and certainly not cheaper by the dozen.
You seem to have discovered the German poultry farmer’s analog to the baker’s dozen. How in tune with the times to offer a little less instead of a little more.
A Croatian friend of mine has commented on the color of egg yolks here. She says they’re orange in Croatia too.
That is different. Do they have words for baker’s dozen? Many years ago when living in Brooklyn, you would buy eggs in a diary store and you’d buy the number you wished. I can’t recall how they were packed. That taxes my memory at the moment. But butter and cheese would also be “cut” to size.
Then came the supermarket with their own packaging.
Then eggs were gathered when the farm was purchased. At least the farmer brings them to market.
I know that different chickens can produce different colored eggs and that fresh eggs I have bought in the past have been oranged yoked. It is the chicken not the egg, or is it the egg and not the chicken
Thanks for all the comments!
@Will, that’s an interesting way to look at the revised number of eggs per carton.
@Dovie and Kathy, I do wonder if it’s something about European chickens, or something related to differences in how they are raised in Europe. I don’t eat chicken very often here, and hadn’t eated it for years in U.S., so I can’t compare the chicken taste, just the eggs. There, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the egg not the chicken. 😉
@Mom, butter is sold in “slab’ packages here, instead of in sticks, but it’s not cut to order in any store I’ve been in.