The Meaning Behind Different Colours of Egg Yolks

 

After 12 long years throughout my 20s and early 30s of having only coffee in the morning I began enjoying a proper breakfast. Mostly eggs everyday. So now after another 10 years I came to know quite a bit about eggs. In Canada and the U.S the ones I would get all had yellow yolks. Then in Egypt a couple of years back I came across some tasty ones with darker yolks — between light and dark orange, which I fell in love with and stick to ever since. I had once briefly read that the darker the colour the healthier the egg and took it as an established truth. As it turned out, this may be true, though it’s not so black-or-white or that straightforward. More research was needed. 



Now, the difference in the yolk colour lies in the diet as well as health of the chicken who laid them.



So what is known about the darker orange yolk — shown in the featured photo on the left — is that they are usually laid by pasture-raised hens. The colour of the yolk is an indicator of a healthy and well balanced diet. As explained in an article titled Egg Yolk: From Light Yellow To Deep Orange, Here’s What It Means:

“Since these pasture-raised hens are allowed to roam outdoors, their diet is supplemented by fresh grass and nutritious omnivorous foods like worms, beetles, grasshoppers, and spiders. This diet is rich in carotenoids, which gives living organisms a red or orange colour”.

Speaking of, carotenoids are mentioned in an earlier article here on One Lucky Soul: Why Flamingos Are Pinkish-Orange. As they are the reason behind the peculiar colouring of the birds who feed on shrimp and molluscs which contain these strong coloured pigments. 



Nevertheless, hens don’t necessarily have to be pasture-raised to lay eggs with dark orange yolks. Any hen can lay such an egg if fed nutritious food.



Further, according to a 2014 Study published by the Journal of Food Science, darker yolks typically contain even more omega-3s and vitamins compared to average lighter yolk eggs.



 

Then we have the yellow yolk, which happens to be the most common — shown on the right. The lighter colour is the result of a vegetarian diet — corn, alfalfa, and beans that are rich in a pigment called xanthophylls, which is responsible for giving plants and animals the colour yellow. 



Last and possibly also least, pale yellow yolks. Foods low in xanthophylls, such as wheat , white cornmeal, or barley result in laying eggs with pale yellow, or in some cases even white yolks. Those remain my least favourite as they feel as though they have been washed from the inside or diluted with water. Fortunately, I rarely encounter them, neither in North American nor in Egypt.

 

Different colours of eggs from different breeds of chicken.
How visually appealing.

While it seems the darker yolks do provide rich nutrients and vitamins, it does not mean the nutritional value of the egg changes based on the colour of the yolk. No matter the colour, in fact, the same amount of protein and fat are provided. Yet, after this full decade of experimenting — around 3650 days with three eggs on the first 7 years then two — one can safely conclude that orange-yolk eggs are my favourite taste, texture, and consequently also experience of all the rest. 

There is something vibrant and radiant to it, and it goes beyond mere colour.

This very “radiance” may actually be felt in the below photo of the homemade Swisstralian CheeseBurger topped with a runny orange egg, prepared as a New Kreation on the Red Sea beach just a few months ago. 

The reason I finally wrote about the topic despite being on my mind for a while is that for the past couple of months the same brand that delivered the orange yolks ( بيض سرور - العالمية ) now sells yellow ones instead. I called their customer support number but no one answered... so far. Eventually, the orange colour returned, yet it was me who once again moved base to Dahab — where egg yolks are yellow. 


The more selfish reason behind choosing not to write about it sooner lies in the fear that everyone will go buy these eggs, leaving nothing for myself. Ha-Ha. But the actual truth, however, is that most people do not care at all about such a thing. They don’t even notice different colours exist. For them the colouring is for the outside shell, white and brown. Try it for yourself; go ask around and see. Every now and then one person would be aware, and, unsurprisingly, they would favour the darker yolks — as it just occurred with a reader who commented on this article.

So, I’m not that selfish after all. Then again, I am sharing all the acquired knowledge with you herein. You’re welcome. Speaking of, here is something else I came to learn throughout the years. 

The repetition equally taught me how to synchronise the timing of the runny egg with each bite. Meaning, how to keep the eggs cooking for a specific amount of time, that the yolk isn’t too runny nor too solid. I have found the perfect balance — one that allows 2-3 seconds between each bite into the yolk before the yellow juice spreads out and likely fall right into your plate (hopefully). In order not to have to lick the plate later nor waste any [single drop] of the eggs, I cook them à la seconde just to remain solid for those 2-3 seconds following the bite. The next bite carries on the work, then probably the third finishes it. One can always insert the entire yolk into their mouth and get it over with, but naturally two-three-3 separate average bites feel more enjoyable.

I’ve been also meaning to particularly share the above information for quite some time. But you can imagine how challenging it is to be mid biting into your mouthwatering meal — and utterly enjoying it — while also capturing the moment on camera while the yolk is still holding on to itself, as seen in the above photo. Experience is truly the best of teachers.

Eggselent

 

Speaking of lessons, the following is yet another bit of knowledge about eggshells which was acquired as a teenager in school:

There are many things that tend to influence our actions and behaviours in life. Usually we are unaware of why we do what we do, but sometimes we are be able to trace the connection using memories often imbedded in the subconscious.

Now, ever since starting to make eggs many moons ago I’ve been using the simple hack to remove broken pieces of eggshells from the bowl or pan. Rather than digging your fingers in the raw egg to chase them which may be a tad tricky, or using a spoon which may be a wee bit easier and faster, I use the rest of the half shell to scoop them out. This has been the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way as the past 15 years of almost daily eggs for breakfast have shown. It is no myth yet it is no common knowledge either.

But then so what? There are many websites and chef videos stating the same. Well, what is remarkable in my case is that I first learned such useful trick in a chemistry class as a young boy at school — even more moons ago. The teacher was most probably discussing the chemical compositions of eggshells and the elements they contain like Calcium Carbonate and maybe also the Ph level inside the egg. He then shared with us kids the golden nugget as a real-life example from nowhere other than the kitchen: “… And that is why pieces of eggshells are attracted to each other even after cracking, that you can pick the small broken pieces using the larger part.” Aha.

Out of the magnanimous amount of information we were required to learn by heart during school, many if to most tend to evaporate after graduation. Some little things, however, like the magnetic property of eggshells here seem to stick to my memory — pun intended.

Over three decades later today I still remember the chemistry teacher whenever scooping in the kitchen. Merci Monsieur.

Homemade Swisstralian CheeseBurger with mushrooms, onion,
and toppled with a runny orange fried-egg

Following this latest decade, I now concur with the fact that having a decent breakfast is truly one of the healthiest and most eggsquisitely eggceptional things you can do to your body and your whole day.

Though before we say Adios, I feel compelled to share that the honest reason I started having and enjoying breakfast is the fact that by then I had stopped waking up to the piercing sound of alarms at insanely early hours of the day. So depending on the time of waking up, I eat two or three hours later, be it at 10 or noon, which is more like a brunch. To be hungry as soon as you wake up, knowing that you have to shave/wear makeup, get dressed, beat traffic, and show up at work on time at 7 or 9 am, sounds like an impossibility. If you can manage that, big Kudos to you. I remember lacking the appetite, at least for a full and proper breakfast. So coffee it was. Grateful these days are long gone, and so is my body and entire being. 

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”

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New Kreation: Jambalaya with Salmon and Shrimps

During that peak “Hermit Phase,” I dared to cook a totally new dish... with 28 different ingredients. Yep. Twenty-eight. Not just that, but I fell down a rabbit hole of culinary origins and linguistic etymology before the stove was even lit. Who does that?

Well, maybe someone who hadn’t had sex in such a long time — given the world was frozen over with mass anxiety. Honestly, I have to “cum” clean [BWAHAHA]: What else was there to do during that pandemonium but obsess over rice? When the bedroom is a ghost town, the kitchen becomes a high-stakes laboratory 🧪. Actually losing my mind from the utter solitude and the lack of human connection was not an option. So again, creativity for the rescue. No wonder the article Creativity Shall Set You Free was conjured just three months afterwards.


Here is it goes...

━━━ 𓋹 ━━━

While all alone at the beach house in Ein el Sokhna on the Red Sea — my sanctuary for the past year — I decided to tackle a total stranger: Jambalaya. 

What made me think about this Louisianian staple all the way out here? Not sure. I tend to be weirdly random like that — as some of you who know me have come to expect. Mayhap the salmon and shrimp in the fridge whispering for a change of scenery. So as one does, I consulted the oracle Google.

Most authentic jambalaya recipes demand andouille sausages and cod fish — a fact confirmed by my friend Ronald McKinley, a fellow drummer from L.A and a New Orleans native. Lacking both, I pivoted. I reckoned salmon would play along nicely and the sausages... well, the dish would survive the omission. Or so I gambled. I headed to the kitchen and went into a trance.

Later, I shared the photo on social media with a bit of history as well as a bit of etymology of the word — mainly to entice me. But without ingredients nor directions; those were added herein.  

Until that day, all I knew about Jambalaya is that it is a merry song by Jerry Lee Lewis, as seen in the 1989 flick Great Balls of Fire! with Dennis Quaid. The original goes back Hank Williams who wrote and performed it in 1952. Much later I found out jambalaya is a Creole/Cajun dish, first made popular at the melting pot of French, Spanish, and African communities of New Orleans, Louisiana. One day I decided to try it, as make it... with 28 different ingredients! 

There is something highly invigorating about trying new things — the thrill of the unknown and the uncertainty. About that raw novelty where you have no clue if you’re making a masterpiece or a mess. Despite the risk, the final result here was heavenly. For me though, the excitement is multi-layered: the cooking is the climax, but the foreplay is the research — digging into the history and the etymology of the word. Depending on the result, finally indulging in what you’ve created can be yet another climax. Then, this storyteller finds the ultimate high in retelling the findings of the experiment.

Challenge created, then indulged in, then written about. This is how I kept my “sanity” while also growing through those two and a half years.


From Ritsa to Uni: a Sea Urchin Story is yet another compelling culinary piece. Eating Cows’ Trotters — كوارع  is one more. 

Might as well share this unique version

Now to the History...

 

Jambalaya is of Creole and Cajun origins, first made popular at the melting pot of French, Spanish, and African communities of New Orleans, Louisiana. There are two main varieties: Caju, which uses the culinary technique known as “dumping”, and Creole which uses the “layering” technique. Of course being here on the beach — all the way in Egypt — meant I had to improvise, bearing in mind what I have and what I don’t. Whatever the result, I absolutely love trying new things. And the Internet is simply a wonderful medium allowing us to do just that.

 

Jambalaya sounds like a funny word. But where did it come from? The below is an extensive and multicultural etymology of the word, as shown in Wikipedia:

 

Fittingly for a product of Cajun culture, the word “jambalaya” seems to have as many possible origins and authors as the complex dish has ingredients and variations — and most of these are easier to discredit than to verify. Until very modern times, Louisiana cooking was largely confined to the local region. The result is a meagre written record of the area’s food history, and folklore has often became “fact”.

 

The most commonly repeated folklore is that the word derives from the combination of the French jambon meaning ham, the French article “à la”, a contraction of “à la manière de”, meaning “in the style of”, and “ya”, thought to be of West African origin meaning rice. Hence, the dish was named “jamb à la ya”. However, ham is not the signature ingredient of the dish and there is no known African language in which “ya” means “rice”.

 

Another source suggests that the word comes from the Spanish jamon (ham) + paella, a noted Spanish rice dish. However, Spanish speakers would call a ham paella paella con jamon, not jamon paella.

 

There is also a popular old wives’ tale about the origin of the word “jambalaya”:

 

Late one evening a travelling gentleman stopped by a New Orleans inn which had little food remaining from the evening meal. The traveller instructed the cook, “Jean, balayez!” or “Jean, sweep something together!” in the local dialect. The guest pronounced the resulting hodge-podge dish as “Jean balayez”.

 

The first print appearance of any variant of the word “jambalaya” in any language occurred in Leis amours de Vanus; vo, Lou paysan oou théâtré, by Fortuné (Fourtunat) Chailan, first published in Provencal in 1837. It includes this text (translated):

The upstairs neighbors were making a din All kinds of people, rich and poor: It was a mish-mash [jambaraya] of red inebriated faces.

 

It is also found in a poem by Louis Charles Felix Peise, “La Testo et la Coua de la Serp”, from his book Leis Talounados de Barjomau (1865), which includes this line (translated):

This rabble [jambalaia] reminds me Of the arrival of an old snake.

 

Both publications are French and neither example used the word in a culinary sense. In both cases it indicates a mish-mash, rabble, or mixture — a meaning that lends itself well to jambalaya.

 

The earliest appearance of the word in print in English occurs in the May 1849 issue of the American Agriculturalist, where Solon Robinson refers to a recipe for “Hopping Johnny (jambalaya)”.

 

Interestingly, while the names Hopping John and jambalaya are treated as referring to the same dish, the recipe is clearly a jambalaya, not a “Hopping John” which is made from rice and beans or peas. An article in the 1875 New Orleans Times reported jambalaya as “spelled in French jumbliade; but the dish is of Indian origin” and “originally made of zizania aquatica, or wild rice … and of several varieties of beans or frijoles as the Mexican Indians call them.” This recipe clearly describes Hopping John, not jambalaya.

 

Jambalaya did not appear in a cookbook until 1878, when The Gulf City Cook Book, by the Ladies of the St. Francis Street Methodist Episcopal Church, was printed in South Mobile, Alabama. It contains a recipe for “JAM BOLAYA”.

The Lots

Ingredients:


Following such an obscure history, here comes the works. The following are the ingredients used the second time, which included a few more than on the first trial. With over 28, jambalaya is usually a one-pot meal. The cool thing about it is that you can freely add or deduct whatever you feel like.

• Olive oil

• Butter

• Diced onions

• Garlic minced

• Diced red and yellow bell peppers

• Peeled seeded chopped tomatoes

• Tomato paste

• Carrots

• Corn

• Ginger

• Potatoes

• White rice

• Boneless skinned salmon cut in cubes

• Shrimps peeled and deveined

• Vegetable broth

• Salt & Pepper

• Basil

• Thyme

• Oregano 

• Rosemary   

• Herbes de Provence

• Turmeric

• Black seeds

• Onion powder

• Garlic powder

• Soya

• Dijon mustard 

• Tabasco

 

Yeah, 28 ingredients and I absolutely love it! Note that, for this very reason, adding relatively small amounts of all herbs and spices seems like a mint idea. I simply used what is available here on the beach while discarding whatever I don’t like or have. Like Cod fish instead of the salmon, which is how they usually make it in Louisiana. There was also celery, which I am really not fond of. Also the Andouille sausage that is one of the main ingredients along with the fish and shrimps. In fact, many of the recipes consulted were titled: Shrimp, Sausage, and Fish Jambalaya. Then again, this is my own version one could say.

I was all alone, so the dish was made for two people, which was enjoyed over two nights. Using one salmon filet and about 12 shrimps. The remaining quantities are not added yet can be seen in the photo below — taken during preparations.  


Directions:

• Add the oil to the heavy-bottom pot on medium high heat then the butter.

• Once the butter melts, add the onion and stir for 5 minutes.

• Add the yellow & red peppers and carrots to the mixture.

• Then add the garlic and stir for about a minute.

• Add the tomato paste and stir for 4-5 minutes.

• Now add the diced tomatoes, corn, salt & pepper, a dash of soya, and 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard.

• Put the vegetable broth in the mix and bring to a boil.

• Stir, add a cup of rice, then reduce heat to medium low and cover — leave it undisturbed for 25-30 minutes till the rice cooks.

• Finally add the shrimp and cubes of salmon while increasing the heat to medium-high. Once boiling, reduce again to simmer for another 10 minutes. Add thyme, oregano, rosemary, herbes de Provence, Turmeric, black seeds, onion powder, and garlic powder — stirring occasionally.

Et Voilà. Now serve and indulge. Nom Nom Nom.

Buon Appetito...

 

ALSO VIEW:

The Origin of Ashoura Dessert — aka Noah’s Pudding  

Eating Cows’ Trotters — كوارع

From Ritsa to Uni: a Sea Urchin Story

Arugula: The Healthy Ancient Aphrodisiac

 
The Difference Between Mandarin, Tangerine, and Clementine

Dropping Two Waist Sizes in a Few Months

Kicking That Sweet Habit

New Kreation: Onion-n-Garlic Pasta with Mussels and Other Yummy Stuff

New Kreation: Veggie Pasta

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New Kreation: Sliced Baked Potatoes with Herbs

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