If an egg goes past the best-before date on its box, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. So, knowing how to test your eggs for freshness is useful. The water test illustrated here is a reliable one because eggshells are porous – the older the egg, the more air there is in the shell and the more buoyant it becomes. At 2-3 weeks, an egg might be stale but can still be used, so long as it is hard-boiled. An egg that floats is one to bin.
Deciphering the code printed on shop-bought eggs will tell you how local they are: at a minimum it will include a number (0=organic, 1=free-range, 2=barn, 3=cage), letters (the country of origin) and a longer number (the producer ID).
All the recipes in the Egg Bible assume medium to large eggs.
