Showing posts with label egg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label egg. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2017

The Egg and I



QUESTION: On a trip to England several years ago, I discovered the joys of eating a soft-boiled egg for breakfast. Of course, the waitress served my egg standing straight up in an egg cup. I became fascinated by these unique little pedestals and purchased several to take home as souvenirs of my trip. After I got home, I started to notice them at flea markets, so I began to buy more. Now I have over 50 of them. How did the egg cup come to be? Who invented it? And why isn’t it used widely here in the U.S.?

ANSWER: While Americans aren’t as keen on eating soft-boiled eggs as their British counterparts, egg cups have won the hearts of many collectors.

Egg cups come in many types, styles and categories, from delicate hand-painted works of art to outrageous caricatures made to represent everything from members of the British royal family to current cartoon characters. Manufacturers use many different materials to produce egg cups, including glass, wood, stone and even plastic.

Egg cups have been used in British cultures for centuries. Though people commonly refer to them as egg cups, they can also be called egg holders. Either way, they’re shallow dishes designed to hold a boiled egg in its shell. Wealthy persons living along the East Coast of the U.S. used them until the mid-1960s, essentially imitating the breakfast habits of their British cousins. But their use never really caught on with the middle class, who instead discovered prepared foods.

Historians believe the Romans were using egg cups before 79 A.D. Clearly, eggs cooked in the shell can be unmanageable without a small receptacle to hold them in place.

The most common egg cup, designed to hold a single egg, is called a single. Less common are doubles. Doubles have a cup on either end, a small one to hold a single egg, or if user turns up the larger end, it will hold one or more eggs out of the shell or the egg of a larger bird such as a duck or goose. There are also bucket egg cups, which  have no pedestal, “Hoop” egg cups resemble napkin rings and can be “straight” or “waisted.” Americans often mistaken them for wide napkin rings. Side-by-side doubles and flat oval egg cups, designed to hold an egg lying on its side and used more often for hard boiled eggs, can be more difficult to find. Egg cups can also come in sets of four to as many as a dozen, on a single matching serving piece for family use. Some egg cups include a spoon and/or a small scissors, often referred to as an egg decapitator.

In Britain and many European countries egg cups are still a standard part of a place setting of china. Since they’re still used in the average home, the easier to find. And since they’re used widely, egg cups from most of the major makers, such as Goebel in Germany, Carlton Ware, Staffordshire, Adams and numerous others in England, are readily available.

Figural egg cups, featuring cartoon character, such as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, and Tweety Bird, are popular with collectors. Other categories include commemorative, political, advertising, holiday, caricatures, transportation, children's, and black memorabilia.  Any of these categories may be made from glass, porcelain, pottery or ceramic. Metals used for egg cup production include gold, silver, copper and pewter. Stone such as marble and many varieties of woods also may be used to produce egg cups.

Egg cup collectors, called pocillovists, must do their homework in order to know what’s available and to watch out for misrepresentation. Because egg cups aren’t an everyday item in the American household, many sellers who acquire eggcups from estates or family sales don’t know what they have and will misrepresent them as something else such as an open salt cellar. Sellers will occasionally misrepresent a common egg cup as something more rare. Serious egg cup collectors agree that chips, cracks, or other flaws are not acceptable.

The Internet has made egg tugs readily available to collectors and is responsible to some degree for the blossoming interest in the United States. However, prices tend to go up and down. Common egg cups can sell for less than a dollar while rarer ones can cost in the hundreds of dollars.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

What the Devil is That?



QUESTION: My mother left me her collection of deviled egg plates. While I’ve eaten deviled eggs at parties and picnics, most of time they’re served on a regular dinner plate or in a plastic Tupper Ware-like container. How did these plates originate? And are they still collectible today?

ANSWER: Deviled egg plates are a throwback to the 1940s and 1950s when hostesses entertained in a more formal manner. It was also not long ago when eggs were a desirable food, especially when they were served deviled on ornate plates made especially for that purpose. Happy housewives back then didn’t have a guilt trip about whether her gourmet delights would clog the arteries of her dinner guests.

What the devil are deviled eggs? Various dictionaries and food encyclopedias trace the history of the devil egg to 18th century England. People began using the term “deviled”  to describe kidneys and other meats served hotly spiced. Most sources accepted the comparison to heat and the fires of Hell, resulting in the adjective deviled.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, hostesses served deviled eggs at all sorts of occasions, from finger food at outdoor barbecues and picnics to appetizers at fancy sit-down dinners. Down South, no proper home was without an deviled egg plate. A North Carolina businessman, who grew up in the 1950s, remembers his mother always putting out two platters of deviled eggs when receiving guests. And deviled eggs became a standard dish at church suppers.

Though egg plates came in a wide variety of shapes and designs, all shared a common feature—a series of half-egg shaped depressions in which deviled eggs could be nested. But despite a centuries-old history of the deviled egg, most museums don’t have any pre-19th century egg plates in their collections. The decorative egg plate seems to have peaked in the 1950s and 1960s.

Deviled eggs reached new heights with proliferation of cocktail parties from the 1940s to 1960s producing an explosion of decorative egg plates during that period. The 1970s, however, marked the end of egg plate’s hey day. 

One of the most popular motifs for egg plates were hens, roosters and chicks. There were trays decorated with hens, shaped like hens or with figural hens, salt and pepper shakers. Small oval plates with matching hen shakers can easily be found in the ochre and avocado colors of the 1970s. Manufacturers also produced plates of other designs with matching salt and pepper shakers. A plate with deviled egg depressions plus two small, flat rimmed depressions is likely one that’s missing its shaker mates.

Multipurpose plates often have space for dips, relishes or other finger food in addition to the deviled eggs. Creative hostesses often place a salad, salad dressing, or relishes in the center of these plates, decorated with a hand-painted hen and rooster decorated egg plate.

Collectors often follow a decorating theme, gathering only those plates embellished with hens or flowers or plates with matching` shakers, etc. Others are more eclectic, preferring highly decorative or unusually shaped egg plates. Flowers, such as roses and violets, matching the china patterns and tastes of the times were quite popular, as were those with fruit or vegetable themes to correspond with kitchen and dining decor. The most commonly found glass egg plates are the ones of blue and green Carnival glass, made by the Indiana Glass Company.

People often confuse egg plates with oyster plates. Deviled egg plates have perfectly oval depressions with smooth edges while oyster plates have jagged edges and slightly kidney shaped depressions. The majority of egg plates are made of heavier china or stoneware, while oyster plates are more commonly found in fine porcelain and majolica. Generally, oyster plates are older, frequently dating from the mid- to late 19th century.

Prices for egg plates vary widely. Fine china and elegant glass egg plates seem to command the highest prices, the market apparently being driven more by the porcelain or glass pattern collectors than egg plate devotees. Many egg plates can be found for under $30, but values for ornate examples or those made by elegant glass or well-known pottery manufacturers can be much higher.