Many, many recipes are for too many people. What do you do in these cases? For example, if your recipe serves four and you’re cooking for two people, you’ll need to cut the amount of each ingredient in half. If the recipes calls for two tomatoes, use just one. But what do you do if the recipe asks for three eggs? Half of 3 eggs is one and a half eggs.
How do you get a half an egg?
It would be nice if your local supermarket sold half eggs. This remains unlikely to happen as these food stores don’t even let you buy purchase individual eggs. Back in my youth, we had a woman who raised her own chickens in her backyard. She would let us buy any number of eggs. Then the town shut her down. However, even she didn’t sell half eggs. Her hens just never produced eggs half the size of normal ones. Whether they were unmotivated, conservative, or just plain unable to lay tiny eggs, we’ll never know.
Perhaps half-sized chickens could produce half-sized eggs.
Perhaps a laser beam followed immediately by a thin blast of air, the temperature of absolute zero, could produce an egg that is not only cut in half but also keeps the yolk and the white inside. Future research is indicated. However, I doubt that this idea, however successfully concluded, would prove commercially viable. I’m guessing that such a half egg would cost a million dollars. Most consumers would balk at such a price.
No, I’m afraid that the making of a half an egg falls squarely on our shoulders. Crack an egg open into a small dish. Scoop out half a yolk the best you can with a spoon. Do the same with the egg white. Now you have your half an egg. You can proceed confidently with the newly reduced recipe. The above photo shows a fried half an egg.
Bon appétit.
Paul De Lancey, Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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