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The Food Geek


Splitting the Egg

comments (5) September 10th, 2009 in Blogs
TheFoodGeek Brian Geiger, contributor
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Kitchen Mysteries is a weekly exploration of oddities surrounding cooking and food. They could be recipes that fail when they shouldn't, conflicting advice from different sources, or just plain weirdness. If it happens in a kitchen, and you're not sure why, send a tweet to The Food Geek to find out what's happening.

Theresa asks via Twitter:

Hi, Theresa,

There is no single answer to this question, because an egg does so many things in baking and cooking. Reducing an egg for one recipe may make perfect sense, but completely wreck another recipe. So, let's look at the egg, what it does, and what we can do with it.

What an egg does:

  • Emulsifier - an egg contains lecithin, which will bring water and oil together.
  • Fluff - whipped egg whites will add body and air to a dish.
  • Structure - eggs will create a stable matrix of molecules to cause custards of various types to retain their shape.
  • Moisture - eggs contain fats which make baked goods moist.
  • Drying - egg whites will tie up water molecules, reducing the moisture level of a baked good.
  • Flavor - eggs are tasty.

This is not a complete list, per se, but a good representative sample of the common things that an egg will do in most of the dishes you're likely to see. So, let's examine a few possibilities.

If you need the whole egg in a recipe, the easiest way to halve it is to mix together the eggs and whites thoroughly and pour half of the mixture into another vessel. You can keep this for a day or so, but you're best off just making some scrambled eggs with it.

If you need just the yolk, you can separate the white from the yolk and mix and halve the yolk as above. The white can be frozen into a yolk-cube for long-term storage, or you could mix it with the rest of the egg yolk for a less-fatty scrambled egg.

If you need the egg whites for foam, just whip the full amount of egg white and use half of it, or even a bit more. 

Use the whole egg. You may have noticed that the above descriptions were not terribly exact as far as measurements and how much to use. This is because eggs are not precisely measured packages in small amounts. If you're making something with dozens of eggs or more, then chances are that you'll weigh your eggs, because the variation in egg over dozens or hundreds of eggs may shift more than your quality assurance folk prefer, and consequently may affect the final product.

For home use, though, I rarely weigh my egg amount, even if I weigh all of the other ingredients. Even if I did, each egg is going to have a different proportion of yolk to white, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the chemical makeup of each egg is going to be somewhat different from chicken to chicken or breed to breed, or even based on what the chicken was eating that week.

Any recipe you use, unless it's some sort of fancy molecular gastronomical recipe, is going to have enough play in it to allow for a pretty wide deviation in egg amount. You're likely to find that whatever you're making is going to be more rich than if you used half the egg, but it's probably not going to be the worse for wear.

The egg nog recipe I use is an example of this: I've modified it so that all of my ingredients work out in even units if I make a triple batch, which I usually will (2/3 for use with bourbon, 1/3 with no distilled spirit). That uses 2 dozen eggs, and all of the milk and cream works out to whole cartons in the end. The original recipe did not work so well from a shopping standpoint, but custards, especially ones that aren't cooked, are plenty malleable.

Of course the final option is to just make the whole recipe and give half of it away to friends, family, and co-workers. If you're making a cookie dough or similar, you could even freeze half of it and save it for later. The important thing is that you have plenty of options to suit your situation. A versatile ingredient lends itself to a versatile workflow.

posted in: Blogs, food geek, cookies, water, egg, weight, measurement, measuring, measure, fluff, nog, weighing, emulsifier, whites
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Comments (5)

iowasue writes: I cook for 2 so I often halve recipes - I keep medium eggs on hand - and use them for half an egg - this works fine in almost all baking recipes, like muffins, pancakes and waffles and cakes and cookies as well as any cooking recipes like custard, casseroles, meatloaves and the like. If I have a recipe with a large amount of eggs that are critical, like angel food or chiffon cake, I use the weighing method as well. I can even use medium or large eggs as long as I get the correct weight. But truthfully, those are the only two products that I have found that egg size really, really matters. If I need to use up eggs quickly, I make eggs a la king or omelettes or scrambled eggs for a supper dish - another place where size doesn't matter. Posted: 10:52 am on October 3rd

feinschmecker writes: I too weigh my eggs for certain recipes. Once I have a core recipe down and it asks for 9 large egg whites that weigh 10 1/4 oz., in the future I don't count the eggs I am using, I just weigh the egg whites to 10 1/4 oz. This delivers a consistent product without wondering if the eggs are alsways the same weight. Posted: 4:50 pm on October 2nd

marcreynol writes: Eggs can be easily weighed with a gram scale. When your recipe calls for 1/2 egg, which is rare), just mix and egg, then weigh it, split the results;you have half an egg.

I freeze egg whites and weigh the amount I use. If anyone is really interested I can create a graph noting the weights in grams of different size eggs, yolks and whites seperated. Some cookbooks may have this info charted.

As noted by another response, I usually cut back or increae another liquid in the recipe.

But, most important is using a scale that records in grams and ounces. In addition I also have a mini-scale for small amounts. For example I weigh yeast in the small gram scale, and flour in the larger.

When possible, I rewrite receipes noting the weights in grams which make it extremely easy to work with. It's just simple math.

Marc Reynolds, editor: masterchefrecipes.com Posted: 10:02 pm on September 30th

KimJSCP writes: Adding more egg and reducing other liquid is a great idea, but sometimes I think that is too risky, so I keep a carton of *fake* eggs (like EggBeaters, but a tastier brand) in the freezer. Those cartons say that one large egg + 1/4 cup of the product. I recently made a delicious Chocolate Truffle Tart (from Gourmet/Epicurious) and used a larger spring-form pan. Therefore I needed 3 1/3 eggs. I cracked 3 eggs into a glass measuring cup (they didn't quite come up to 3/4 C) and added the fake eggs to equal 3/4 c, 1 T and 1 tsp.

My method can be more difficult and so is frequently not worth it, but when liquids are not interchangeable, fake eggs can be a better substitute for eggs than butter or cream or another liquid or vice versa. Posted: 12:00 am on September 11th

Cooksbakesbooks writes: Unless it's something that needs to be really precise, I usually just reduce the amount of other liquid by a little bit (~ a tbsp.)in the recipe when this problem arises. As you said, the finished product might be a little different, but using the whole egg doesn't wreck the recipe. Last week I accidentally put an extra egg in a batter that only called for two eggs, and it was better than usual (less crumbly and hard, more tender and chewy). So I will add an extra egg to that cookie recipe from now on. Posted: 5:19 pm on September 10th

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