Country Life
By IAN NIALL
THE freshness of an egg is, according to some, an imponderable question, but I read the other day that a solution had been found by `experts' seeking to establish the newlaidness of the breakfast egg. They immersed it in water. If it tended to float or rise from the bottom at an angle of a degree or two it was not quite as newly come to the kitchen as it might have been, I am no expert on the fresh- ness of anything but eggs picked from the nestbox while the hen is still cackling, but I smiled at the immersion of eggs in water being hailed as some- thing new. Every bird-nesting country boy in my day knew all about this and the first thing he did when gathering peewits' eggs for breakfast was to 'try' them in the nearest pool. If they floated or attempted to, they were addled or 'chicked.' If they remained submerged, they were fit to eat. That there is nothing really new under the sun is the egg-stamper's defence. Give us a date instead of a lion, ask the retailers. It sounds reasonable, but who is to stamp the egg and when? It simplifies things if the man doing the stamping is the man gathering the eggs, but what small comfort there is if he accidentally or deliberately mis-sets his stamp and we only dis- cover his perfidy at breakfast ! Can we trust anything but the cackling hen?
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