My previous post talked about the renascence of butter, a long vilified or at least suspect food that never deserved the cold shoulder in the first place. It’s fitting that this post be about eggs, not only because whole eggs are now seen as good (as opposed to just the whites), but because eggs and butter are so essential to good baking. Eggs, butter, and sugar give you a fabulous basis for a dessert, such as clafoutis, pound cake, or éclairs, while eggs and butter with other ingredients (notably cheese) make delightfully savoury gougères. An egg cooked in a buttered pan gives you a fab scramble, creamy and ready for seasoning. Like butter, eggs are not only staples in my kitchen but they are especially cherished and appreciated, week in, week out. Rarely does a day go by that we don’t have either butter or eggs in our dishes, and often both at the same time.

Eggs are one of nature’s perfect packages, aesthetically pleasing as well as biologically clever. As we all know, if they pair well with butter in baking, they pair even better with cheese in the eating — and they complement each other in their protein to fat ratios. If cheese is more fat than protein, eggs are the other way round: about 9% fat, (mainly in the yolk) with the rest being a large number of various proteins (half of which are also in the yolk). No wonder we enjoy butter and eggs so much together!