An asymmetrical egg. Have you ever seen one? It’s odd, no?
Because the regular shape of an egg is this: it’s an oval (the word oval actually comes from the Latin ovum: egg). Which we usually think of as a symmetrical shape. But oval is actually defined as ‘having a rounded and slightly elongated outline or shape like that of an egg’.
So technically, an egg’s shape is oval, ie: having a rounded and slightly elongated outline or shape like that of an egg. An egg is egg-like in shape. It’s a sort of circular logic. Maybe you could call it an ellipsoid, or something like an oblate spheroid, if you wanted.
But words seem unimportant, because anyone who has ever held an egg in its shell knows that an egg is not symmetrical. If you hold it lengthwise, with a finger on either end, the ends are different shapes. One is rounder, the other pointier.
This reality is thrown into sharp relief when you prepare to eat a boiled egg. Not only because you have the chance to observe the egg up close, but because you’re forced to make the difficult decision: on which end, respectively, should the egg sit or be chopped?
I know which way I like it. It’s a decision I made unconsciously many years ago, when I was a kid. It seemed obvious, evident, a fait accompli. But now I’m not so sure.
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If you’re ever having trouble getting out of bed, I suggest reading a chapter from No Time to Spare, by Ursula LeGuin. It has been living on my bed for months now, and more than once it has provided me with the impetus to drag myself out of bed for no purpose at all other than to experiment with something she wrote about. Or because something about her prose is enough to levitate your energy up and off the mattress. She’s kind of magic that way.
Two days ago, it was her chapter entitled Without Egg.
Without Egg is about breakfast and compassion. In it, LeGuin describes a Viennese café she and her husband used to frequent while they were in living in that fine European city.
Even thinking of this café, imagining it with its darkwood decor and cobblestoned streets outside as I lay in bed, felt like a joyous vacation for me. Oh, the pleasure of an unknown café in an unfamiliar street! where the quiet whispers of strangers create strange symphonies and people walk past! carrying cultures and wearing clothes before unseen!
The Viennese breakfast LeGuin described was this:
Coffee
Crusty bread with butter
Assorted sliced fruit
A single boiled egg
Not so exciting, right? Maybe. But something about the perfect simplicity of this breakfast, its reliability and discipline, appealed to me. Two reasons spring to mind. One: my German grandma, who adheres to a similarly austere breakfast routine:
Earl grey tea (3-4 mugs)
Crusty bread with butter
A single boiled egg (hold the fruit)
She has started her day this way for as long as I can remember, with a steady consistency that diverges so completely from my flighty frivolity that I find myself roundly humbled. Just the other day she told me, with the same amazement she usually reserves for each birthday (‘can you believe I’m 95?!’), ‘and I’m not bored of it yet!’.
Two: an association between continental breakfasts and my own experiences of travel. Thinking about LeGuin’s breakfast, memories of memorable (or not-so memorable) breakfasts came hurtling in.
I remember waking up late and rushing to a would-be continental breakfast of strange cereals and mutli-coloured yoghurts on the 13th floor of a hauntingly quiet, concrete hotel in Santiago, Chile. I arrived breathless, hurriedly threw down some unidentifiable foodstuffs, then dashed down the stairs to reception (the elevator was broken), making it just in time for the airport pick-up.
I remember slow, sun-drenched mornings in Ushuaia, up in the tiny seventh storey dining tower, with 360 degree views over the old port town. Half awake and jet-lagged, assembling some fruit, tea, corn flakes and yoghurt in various bowls then sitting, looking out the window, watching the mayhem unfold on the port seven floors and a kilometre away.
French cafés that double as bars and serve dark, black coffee in the shadows. You can sit in wooden booths with red leather upholstery. I didn’t, instead sitting out on the grey cobbled street with a coffee, watching currents of air, warm and cold, curl and coalesce. I remember all this too.
Thoroughly transported, I decided to have my own continental, Viennese breakfast at home today.
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What’s interesting about LeGuin’s chapter is that it’s not all about how wonderful Viennese breakfasts are. In fact, they’re a little fraught.
Like, one day, she doesn’t feel like the egg. So she asks for the regular breakfast, but without an egg. This request, a deviation from the norm, caused quite a stir, both in the waiter and her conscience. She describes the tension: her genuine disinterest in the egg and desire not to have one on her plate; her awareness that the egg is an essential part of the Viennese café breakfast, and denying it seems at once strange, culturally ignorant and ungrateful; her awareness that she could have simply accepted the egg and not eaten it; her sense that in post-war Austria, the egg is a symbol of recovery and luxury, and her rejection of it could be interpreted, in some way, as a repudiation of the nation as a whole.
It’s not simple, this breakfast business.
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As meals go, I love breakfast, having been trained, by a lovely ex from long ago, in the ways of breakfast appreciation. However, it has been a while since I got really excited about this first of all meals. In fact, some days I skip it altogether. But on this morning, with the promise of a Viennese breakfast a la LeGuin, I fairly leapt out of bed and jogged to the kitchen.
I started thinly slicing some banana, apple and papaya. Even this, the act of thinly slicing with intention, rather than just chopping roughly and chucking in a bowl, made me feel kind of holidayish and special. I arranged them on the plate.
I don’t generally eat bread, but I do have some quite nice, slightly cardboardy crackers I eat from time to time, so I fanned a few of them out with some butter beside.
I put the kettle on and spooned some decaf coffee grounds into the plunger.
Then the egg.
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LeGuin gives very specific instructions for boiling the perfect egg, which I decided to follow. You put the egg and the tap water in a pot, then bring to the boil. Once the water is rolling you take the pot off the heat and set the alarm for three and a half minutes. Then remove the egg from the water. This, for LeGuin, yields the perfect egg.
The presentation of the egg offered up a small challenge, because I did not own an egg cup. (I do now. I went to an op shop in Lithgow the same day and bought a matching pair). On this morning though, I had a roly poly egg, and that was how it was going to be.
Now coming to the decision from earlier in the post: which end to chop?
It was quite simple, really. I chopped the same end I always do: the smaller, pointy end.
Does anyone do otherwise?!
LeGuin does her best to present a balanced appraisal of the two options (well actually three, including chopping right through the middle: what?!), and she does provide some (not very compelling) arguments for chopping the rounder, flatter end. To me it’s always seemed so obvious that this broad, flatter end is simply made for the egg to sit on. Anyone else?
I’ll have to ask my grandma.
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Another thing LeGuin talks about in Without Egg is the importance of choosing the right tools for the job. The knife used for cutting the top and the spoon selected for scooping are both indispensable and integral to the dining experience. They must be carefully selected and fit for purpose.
With the knife, the main concern is a clean cut, to avoid littering your egg with shards of shell. I chose a serrated Victorinox knife with a red handle, for its sharp blade. (In retrospect it wasn’t the best choice. This morning I went with a little Opinel knife, chosen for its thin, sharp blade and got an almost clean cut of the shell).
For the spoon, there are a few obvious things. It needs to be small enough to fit in the hole at the top of the shell. Extra points, I think, if it’s small enough that you can scoop small morsels of egg out and make it last a while. It’s all over too soon with a big spoon. The other thing she talks about is the thickness of the metal bowl of the spoon. If the edges of the bowl are too thick, it’s hard to scrape the shell out cleanly, and we all know that’s enough to drive you crazy, right?
I settled on a small souvenir spoon with a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the tip of the handle. Its small, thin bowl seemed perfect for scraping the egg from the shell. And it was.
The breakfast was delightful, and a similar day followed.
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I’ve been thinking about sharing this experience for a few days now, because it was so nice and I thought you might want to try it. But I keep putting it off in favour of more work-y things. (Yes, some work things are happening again now, which is a bit odd, but nice, too).
Anyway, this morning I decided to have another single boiled egg and test-drive the new egg cup and, as Buzzfeed would say, ‘you won’t believe what happened next!’.
When I picked up the egg, one given to me by a friend, I was astonished to discover that it was almost perfectly symmetrical. No joke. It really was – I feel like I need photographic evidence but I don’t have any.
I turned the egg this way and that, trying to decide which way was up. In the end it wouldn’t matter of course, because I couldn’t tell top from tail. But what a conundrum!
What mattered was that the top-chop was clean and the egg was well-cooked. And they were.
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I’m not really sure what the point of this whole thing is. Probably no point, really. Except there is, because this whole thing was so much fun – the reading, the preparing, the eating, the writing. Maybe that’s point enough.