THE HUMBLE HEN’S egg is one of the most readily available, cheap and endlessly versatile food stuffs around, but did you know that it is also one of the most ancient? Us humans have been eating all things ovoid since the Neolithic period, chomping our way through varieties of fowl egg from chickens, geese, quail, pheasant, plovers and guinea fowl, to ostriches, emu, pelican, pigeon and gull (the latter is without a fishy taste, apparently, contrary to rumour).
It’s little wonder, really. The egg is nature’s perfectly packaged hand-held, bite-size snack. It’s packed with vitamins (A, B, D and E) minerals (iodine, phosphorous, selenium, zinc and iron) and it’s a ‘complete’ protein, meaning that it has all of the essential amino acids that our bodies need.
Eggs are also a…