Given the current climate, old jokes such as’how do you like your eggs in the morning?’ are probably not appropriate.
However, if you should ask then I like them boiled, as dippy eggs, and Clarence Court eggs are the dippiest eggs there are.
You don’t just buy an egg when you buy Clarence Court Eggs, you buy some of the most interesting eggs out there. Take the shells, for instance, Clarence Court Burford Browns aren’t simply brown but a deep russet colour with a marked custom car style paintjob sheen. The Burford Brown hen is famed for being very docile, a great hen to have around kids, and the breed was developed in the Cotswolds in 1990 from an old 1940s line of hens.
Apparently if you’re a big rock star who has bought a farm (as opposed to buying the farm) then these are the ones to have. Perhaps they are even tax deductible, perhaps ask Bono.
Anyway, the egg colour is so attractive it seems a shame to lose it so this is a great choice for a boiled egg, something that really stands out at breakfast.
Just as stand out are Clarence Court Old Cotswold Legbar with their sky-blue, shells. Those of us males of a certain age will remember painting the belly of our Airfix kit aeroplanes in a blue this colour and the nostalgia doesn’t stop there.
The creamy white and brilliant gold of the yolk also harks back to a time when eggs all came like this, a time before the insipid yellows of factory eggs.
It’s a colour that’s partly down to the breeds, but also to how Clarence Court farm the eggs. The birds are truly free range from dawn to dusk and are fed on cereal based feed. This natural diet creates natural golden yolks.
A more standard style egg is the Clarence Court Foghorn, which can’t help but make some people think of Foghorn Leghorn, the overbearing southern chicken of the Looney Tunes cartoons. These are a bit larger than the other eggs and have a china white shell that is dazzling.
Beautiful white interiors and a golden yolk that clamours to have some buttered toast soldiers dipped into it or be fried in snapping butter. We tried these as well as some Clarence Court Duck Eggs, which are just enormous – served as a fried egg on our own sour dough they drew gasps from assembled children and adults.
All the eggs are also great for making pasta, delivering lovely yellow colour, and the quality is such that they also work well in baking lending their colour especially well to sponges.
The final eggs we tried were quails’ eggs. These are, it has to be said, absolute ******s to peel but there is a technique gained with practice and by the last one we were getting it.
Served as little canapes they are lovely but we put ours into a classic Tuna Nicoise where their size was perfect for the job.
For every London dweller this is egg perfection, the sort of egg country dwellers like to mock us for not having and which make country hotel breakfasts so fantastic. And the best bit is you can buy them in many supermarkets, Waitrose of course and others.