Last week a colleague at work, who lives in one of the prettier areas of rural Virginia, brought a dozen duck eggs to work. She had purchased them from a local farmer. Several of us pounced on these exotic avian gifts, since most of us obtain eggs from the lowly chicken from local grocers. Curiosity prompted me to compare the duck eggs to the two varieties of chicken eggs in my refrigerator. I only purchase large brown organic, cage-free chicken eggs. In the U.S. egg categories do not necessarily hold true, however. Both the eggs in the center and to the left of center are sold as large eggs. The definition of large seems not to be standard. However, capitalism is alive and well in the Commonwealth. A dozen eggs on the left sell for $3.99 USD for a dozen, whereas the middle eggs sells for $6.99 USD per carton.
The differences in their sizes are astounding. The duck egg on the right is huge by comparison.
The duck egg made me think of Jane Austen, her mother and her sister. We know that the three women struggled for a number of years after Reverend Austen’s death, moving from house to house, city to city, before settling in Chawton Cottage. As the rector’s wife in Steventon Cottage, during Jane’s childhood, she oversaw a poultry yard with ducks, turkeys, chicken, guinea fowls. The move from city life to Chawton Cottage provided the Austen women with access to a substantial garden once more.
Image of the garden at Chawton Cottage by Tony Grant.
Studying my duck egg, I wondered how similar it was to the kind Mrs. Austen (or her maid of all work) would have gathered. Apparently, Aylesbury ducks were popular in the UK during the late 18th through 19th centuries. These free ranging ducks ate grubs and any protein of interest, giving their meat and eggs a unique, strong flavor.
Aylesbury ducks figured prominently in Beatrix Potter drawings. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
My duck egg tasted delicious – not much different from my free-ranging chicken egg, except that one egg took the place of two! I looked at some of my favorite 18th century cookbooks to see how duck eggs were used in recipes. The recipe below is typical of the era, in that few or no measurements were provided. One could assume is that “egg” is the food that the cook happened to have on hand, be it pigeon, quail, grouse, chicken, or duck!! I have one duck egg left and intend to fry it as round as balls!
To fry Eggs as round as Balls.
Having a deep frying-pan, and three pints of clarified butter, heat it as hot as for fritters, and stir it with a stick, till it runs round like a whirlpool; then break an egg into the middle, and turn it round with your stick, till it be as hard a poached egg; the whirling round of the butter will make it as round as a ball, then take it up with a slice, and put it in a dish before the fire; they will keep hot half an hour, and yet be soft; so you may do as many as you please. You may poach them in boiling water in the same manner.
– The Frugal Housewife, Or, Experienced Cook: Wherein the Art of Dressing All Sorts of Viands with Cleanliness, Decency, and Elegance is Explained in Five Hundred Approved Receipts … p. 42, Susannah Carter January 1, 1822, University of Oxford, downloaded at: http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/N09/N09703.html
More about ducks:
Ducks a Potted History: https://britishfoodhistory.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/ducks-a-potted-history/
Soup Through the Ages: A Culinary History with Period Recipes, Victoria Rumble, foreword by Sandra Oliver, McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2009, p. 61, https://goo.gl/QhfJ35
Duck egg recipes from Great British Chefs. Perhaps I should try boiled egg and soldiers!
Jane Austen's World 
In my youth in the UK you could still buy egg cups for duck eggs. My favourite was a wooden one that was reversible, duck egg on one side, turn it upside down and it was a regular egg cup for chickens eggs
Thanks for answering a question I always had about the two-sided egg cup. Makes perfect sense now.
I have never seen a ducks egg, let alone eaten one. Am I missing out on a real treat :?:
In Australian all our chook (chicken) eggs are graded, the cartons hold
12 x 50 gm average weight;
12 x 55 gm, and
12 x 70 gm
converted to ounces,
1.764 oz each for the 50; 1.94oz the 55 and 2.469oz for the 70 gm
Thought I’d save you the trouble of trying to convert from the metric to the Imperial
For cooking to a recipe when eggs are specified it is the 55 gm that is used, they are the large eggs the 70 naturally are classed as Very large Eggs, but I don’t think they come anywhere near that duck egg, it’s a real beauty. :)
Some of the eggs were blue. They are truly beautiful to behold and nothing like the white anemic eggs that poor chickens raised in overcrowded pens churn out.
Now that would be worth seeing.Blue eggs. I wouldn’t be able to eat them, I’d have to keep them
Poaching an egg in ‘Three pints of clarified butter’ stopped me in my tracks. It is reasonable that they took those long, energetic walks all over the countryside to stay healthy. I love the mental pictures it conjures……!
…of my arteries as I ingest what will probably be a delicious egg.
If a household had even a small flock of hens they would have had eggs of varying sizes. Hens lay bigger eggs as they get older, but some varieties just lay smaller eggs. The eggs of our oldest hen are about two thirds the size of the youngest. They’re also the tastiest.
It has nothing to do with the point of the post, Southampton was not a a city wwhen Jane Austen lived there. Three years ago it celebrated the 50th anniversary of being created a city by the Queen.
Thank you, April. I meant to say from town to town and city to city during those peripatetic years, when the women were not assured a place where they could keep chickens and cows and grow their own vegetables. I thought the large chicken eggs I like to purchase were huge until I saw the duck egg. It is also curious that both chicken eggs are labeled large – not large and extra large.
It’s been a long time since I bought eggs, but I think we have large and extra large in the UK. The duck egg looks wonderful.
We had duck and goose eggs from time to time when i was a child and I have to say I was never very keen; a farm duck egg is very strongly flavoured indeed, but I ate them because they were food and therefore not to be despised. I daresay if we’d had them more often I would have become accustomed to the flavour and would not have noticed.
The goose egg tasted remarkably like an organic free-range chicken egg. I simply scrambled it and the results looked like two chicken eggs scrambled.
Thanks so much for this recipe. In the 80’s in China I had coated deep fried sweet and sour eggs and this gives a clue to how they were made. Delicious BTW.
Sounds delish
How interesting. Yes, “large” eggs vary in size. I’m not sure how much the USDA supervises branding in farmers markets.
Please post a photo of your round as a ball egg.
I will if I’m successful! 3 pints of clarified butter is a stretch, so I thought I would add quite a bit of butter to the water.
I live in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada and when I was young my Dad used to bring home duck eggs from a local farmer. I still remember how big they were and how good they tasted. I’ve thought about them over the years and only wish I could get some again. I suppose if I tried hard enough to, there must be farmers out there that still sell them.
I had no idea that you could get them. Even our local organic food store does not offer them. I think you have to know a farmer who raises geese, like my coworker does.
What to do with all that leftover clarified butter?
We’ll see!
An interesting article Vic. It is still a dream to produce our own food for us Brits. Many people have allotments where they grow produce. I am thinking of digging some of my back garden over to vegetables.Its not because we need to, it is more of a political and lifestyle statement. It is a great way to keep fit, eat healthily, get close to the food chain and enjoy nature and, also, put two fingers up to TESCOS and SAINSBURYS !!!
Here’s our problem in my neighborhood, Tony. We can grow veggies, but the deer and squirrels eat them faster than we can grow them. AND, neighborhood laws don’t allow chickens, goats, geese, or any of the farm animals I adore … I LOVE chickens. Love their cluck cluck clucks, and consider their gift to us – eggs – to be the most perfect food. I agree that the choices are political and lifestyle. It probably cost me $25 to grow the one tomato that the squirrels didn’t eat!!
You need to check local regulations, I have a friend who is officially a farmer [she’s on boundary land farm/suburb] because she rents 2 acres from a neighbour.
I’m officially in the city limits. Several properties have been grandfathered in and are allowed chickens and peacocks. The property with the pony paddock was sold in 2000 and we no longer see this lovely animal around.
what a bummer! bad luck, sorry to hear it
I live in Devon and my local butcher usually has duck eggs, they make the usual large chicken eggs look wimpy and taste anaemic I love them in cakes , boiled or fried. They have great flavour.
Love the idea of putting them in cakes.
They are great in cakes, or anything you can do with hens’ eggs.
love yur tidbits. on 18 the century life. I
Thank you!
Lovely article and that duck egg is a monster. I think egg sizes vary with the chicken laying them. I buy mine from a friend who has her own little flock of “girls” and they always vary in size and come in all sorts of shades of beige and brown, some with speckles and some not. Our city fathers changed the codes last year so that people in the city limits can have up to three chickens. Very progressive for a pretty conservative city. And wow! Isn’t 3 pints of clarified butter a lot? Holy cow!
Luckily the recipe states that you can substitute water.
visited a local farm with the kids some years ago, quite a variety of eggs from different fowl and different colorations.
My dad had chickens for a while, but now he just has guinea fowl. Since they don’t nest like regular chickens, it’s harder to find their eggs, and when you do, you don’t always know how long it’s been there.
denise
You’ll have to ‘swim’ them to check how fresh they are like you do with chicken eggs that some dumb chook has hidden. the deeper they sink in a pan of water, the fresher they are, if they float they are rotten! otherwise you just adjust the cooking time accordingly.
A thought: I have come across something which reminds me that I have received wisdom that you have to eat duck eggs fresh and cannot lay them down in isinglass like you do with normal eggs [Isinglass was available and used in Jane’s time] or at least as you did when I was a little girl and eggs were still much affected by the season. I don’t know why you can’t store duck eggs.
Vic, I include this bit about egg sizes on the British Conversions page of my blog:
Eggs: Standard egg sizing in the UK is different from that in the US. All of my recipes call for large eggs US (57 to 64 grams) which are medium eggs UK (53 to 63 grams). Large eggs UK (63 to 73 grams) are extra large eggs US (64 to 71 grams).
So if I had my own chickens, laying all sorts of different sized eggs, I’d be weighing my eggs each time I baked.
My mother kept ducks for a time when I was a little girl. One day I was helping her make a chocolate cake, when she decided to use a duck egg instead of the usual 3 store-bought chicken eggs in the recipe. I was completely grossed out and refused to eat the cake! Kids, eh?