SECT. LXXXIII.—ON EGGS.
The eggs of hens and pheasants are the best of all; those of geese and ostriches not good: of all animals, fresh eggs are superior to the old. Those that are moderately boiled are most nutritive; those that are slightly boiled pass downwards most easily, and smooth asperities in the throat. All the other kinds are difficult to digest and evacuate, and contain thick juices, except those that are said to be suffocated. These are prepared by beating up raw eggs, sauce, wine, and oil, and coagulating to a middling consistence in a double vessel. In this state they are of easy digestion, and supply good juices. But of all others the fried are the worst.
Commentary. Our author, Oribasius, and Aëtius copy their account of eggs from Galen.
Hippocrates says that they are nutritious, strengthening, and flatulent. See also Celsus (ii, 18.)
See a curious account of the medicinal properties of eggs in Pliny. (H. N. xxix. 3.)
Rhases recommends to eat eggs in a soft state, with pepper and marjoram. (Cont. xxxiii.) He says that the best eggs are those of the hen and partridge, and next to them those of the duck. Those of geese, he says, should not be eaten. (Ad Mansor. iii, 13.)
The ancients preserved their eggs in the flour of beans, chaff, or bran. (Pliny, H. N. x, 61; Columella, viii, 6; Varro, De Re Rustica, iii, 9.) Pliny mentions that, if an egg be macerated in vinegar, it will become so soft that it may be drawn through a ring without breaking. Harduin says that he had verified the truth of this fact by experiment.
Horace affirms that eggs of an oblong shape are the best:
“Longa quibus facies ovis erit, illa memento
Ut succi melioris et ut magis alma rotundis
Ponere.”
(Sat. ii, 4.)
We have here adopted the emendation of Bentley. The commentator Acron, however, read alba, but took it in the same sense as alma.
The ancients used to begin their banquets with eggs, and hence the expression “ab ovo ad malum;” that is to say, from beginning to end of a banquet.
Galen and Simeon Seth agree that eggs which are boiled hard, or which have been roasted in ashes until they are hard, become indigestible, and supply heavy nourishment to the body; but such as have been fried they more especially condemn. When boiled to such a consistence as that the white was just beginning to coagulate, they were called tremula. When so soft that the albumen was not all coagulated, they were called sorbilia. In both these states they are much approved of by Galen, Seth, and all the authorities. Galen especially commends the eggs of the hen and of the pheasant. Those of the goose and ostrich, he says, are inferior.