Yolks worthy of champagne

The changes in the quality of our food brought on by industrialization can be hard to spot, especially when we consider that many of them happened before we were born. Our great-grandmothers may have known what a farm-raised egg yolk was supposed to look like, but consult anyone much farther down the family tree, and everyone’s using supermarket fare as the baseline for comparison.

If you pry open the Styrofoam on the cheapest carton of eggs at your local supermarket and crack the bleach-white shell to reveal the contents, you’ll see a jaundiced faded Post-It hue that would have shocked your great-grandmother.

It would also have shocked Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin.

If her name doesn’t ring a bell, walk down the aisle to the wine section. You might want to avoid eye contact with the staff after those egg-cracking shenanigans. Really, what were you thinking?

Okay, so walk over to the sparkling wines. See the one on the top shelf, with the orange label? Read the smaller type. Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, the namesake of the champagne brand, chose that orange label in a day long before corporate branding or color matching technology even existed.

In a precedent-setting move, Veuve Clicquot registered this trading color with the French government. And how did she indicate which shade of orange would mean Veuve Clicquot, in a day when Pantone swatches were still 150 years in the future? She turned to eggs.

The famous widow (veuve means widow) specified that her labels would match the brilliantly dense shade of orange unique to eggs from cornfed hens from Bresse. Bresse chickens are renowned to this day throughout France as an ideal specimen, prized for their flavorful and tender meat and clean fat. It certainly doesn’t hurt their reputation in the least that their crowns are red, their feathers white, and their feet blue, making them into little avian French flags as a bonus.

Veuve Clicquot is referred to in wine circles as ‘Yellow Label’, but this odd mismatch between orange and yellow can be attributed to a translation error. ‘Jaune’ means both yellow and yolk in French, and the aforementioned Bresse comparison caused some confusion that kept us from calling it ‘orange label’. Incidentally, there is no confusion among Veuve Clicquot’s lawyers, who pursue over 50 transgressions a year against their copyrighted shade.

These orange-yolked beauties are partially a result of breed, but primarily a function of the level of care and quality of feed given to the hens in question. Luckily, if you know where to look, you too can enjoy the same deeply orange hues that the Widow deemed worthy of adorning her bubbles.

I’ve drawn up this chart, with apologies to Rainbow Market’s identical data shown on their egg case, to outline the different factors that impact the quality of eggs in the Bay Area. Obviously, there are countless more farms that need to be added here; this is only the selection available at Rainbow. But it’s a start, and it brings to light more information than is made available at national supermarkets. Color coding here identifies good practices versus less desirable practices.

On this particular day, I chose a six-pack of ovaloid goodness from Clark Summit, one of the few farms to tick all the good boxes on the chart. Madame Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin would hopefully approve of their shade.