I Am The Food On Your Plate - Eggs

A Force of Nature—and in Kitchens.

- Kate Lowenstein & Daniel Gritzer

IN 1911, a newspaperman in Canada named Joseph Coyle overheard an argument: A hotelier and a farmer were exchanging accusations about who was responsible for the broken eggs found in the latter’s deliveries. It inspired Coyle to experiment with a sturdy solution—made, of course, of newspaper. A few years later, the Coyle Egg-Safety Carton had taken off.

You’ll find me tucked into a very similar model today, nested in fridges across the world, ready to start the day. And morning is when bleary-eyed humans are most likely to pluck me from that carton to coddle, bake, or fry. People have favored me for breakfast since at least 1620, when a British medical writer by the name of Tobias Venner suggested poached eggs with vinegar in the morning. Four centuries later, you awake to me in more wonderfully varied forms than ever: scrambled hard, scrambled soft, over easy, sunny-side up, en cocotte, in a hole, 100-year, Scotch, hard-boiled, basted, even astride a strip of steak.