Double-yolked eggs are reasonably common for ducks and chickens, despite the fact that we so rarely see them in stores. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 eggs (out of 50 billion produced annually in the US) have double yolks. Eggs increase in size as the number of yolks increases, but most of them are caught by "candling," or holding the egg up to a light source to reveal a shadow of what is inside the shell, and used for other egg products instead of being mixed in with single-yolks. Stores that do offer the eggs usually have one local source for them. The chickens, ducks and other birds that lay them have a genetic tendency to produce the eggs, so if a farm is stocked with such birds, most of their eggs with have double yolks. The eggs are popular with anyone who likes yolks and are also believed to be good luck by many.
Far less common are multiple yolk eggs, including triples and quadruples, like the one pictured above. Apparently, the greatest number of yolks found in one egg was nine!
If you can't find any multiple-yolk eggs in your neck of the woods, you can always separate one egg, add the yolk to another, and save the white for later.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-04-2007 @ 3:54PM
fasteddie said...
Lou Mitchell's restaurant in Chicago *only* serves double yolked eggs.
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1-04-2007 @ 7:34PM
Zebra said...
This is quite amazing. Only once in my life have I seen a double-yolk egg in more than 20 years. I never thought it was as high as 1:1000. Very interesting!
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1-06-2007 @ 10:44PM
JT said...
Heck, I'm only 46 but have been cooking & baking since I was a kid & couldn't count how many times I've had double yolk eggs. Easily dozens of times. I always thought I got them so often because I always use jumbo eggs for everything but baking & recipes which call for a specific size.
Never been one to pay any attention to brands of eggs so I don't know how likely it is that every egg literally get's examined to weed out multi's by every farm.
Buy jumbo's, trust me a few dozen cartons & you'll get a double. I'd say I guess right 50% of time when I see one as I obessively check every carton I buy & take uncracked ones from other cartons to make sure I always get 12 perfect eggs & I've noticed that doubles often tend to be elongated & ever so slightly misshapened or rather, not smooth lined from small to large end.
I do need a life. I always get such a kick when I open one or should I say get "lucky". Such a thrill.
LOL. And trust me...with all I've had, I can say emphatically they don't bring any extra good luck. The extra yolk is the good luck...as long as you have low cholesterol as I have.
JT
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1-07-2007 @ 9:14PM
ThatTallGuy said...
Here in Amsterdam, double-yolked eggs are stocked in the grocery stores next to the single-yolked ones. That was a first for me...
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1-21-2007 @ 11:36PM
bumblebee said...
I recently baught a dozen normal organic cage-free eggs from stop n shop, to find that about half of them were double-yolked. I cracked four eggs one morning, and two of them were double-yolked, making six yolks total. i had never even seen a double-yolked egg before, nevermind two in one morning! i asked my roomates, who said they had found three double-yolked eggs out of the six eggs total they cracked from that same dozen that week.
i looked it up online to see if that meant anything speicific. one website said that double-yolked eggs were good luck, specifically signifying that money would come your way, and some websites said it was bad luck, evena as bad as death of a family member. one website author said that when she lived on a farm, double-yolked eggs were only produced by the happiest, healthiest animals.
i found all the information interesting, but since none of the information really made sense or matched up with any other evidence, i concluded that the unusual number of double-yolked eggs was probably just a wierd coincidence.
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1-28-2007 @ 5:46PM
Frank said...
I have all the double yolk eggs you want. They are large and great to eat.
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3-16-2007 @ 4:53PM
TheLastBastion said...
I buy eggs from our local greengrocer on Station Road Billingham.They are described as Medium, large and eggstremely large. The latter are so big the egg cartons do not close. The eggs are invariably double yolked, rich and creamy.
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