Episode 28 - Egg-stra special: spring food traditions

00:00 
Mariya
And then we will just dip it inside.

00:06
Ed
And there it's going to soak up the colour.

00:08 
Mariya
Then it soaks up a bit. 
You can use more than one egg just to save some time. 
I hope there are not too many Bulgarians watching judging my egg dying technique because this is how we did it at my home, in my household.

00:22
Intro
Science on the menu, a podcast by the European Food Safety Authority.

00:38
Ed
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Science on the menu. My name is Ed Bray, and I'm joined today by Mariya Dokova. 
So Maria, you know as one of the anchors of our podcast. And we're going to anchor this together. 
The topic today we're going to be looking again at food traditions. We did an episode on food traditions around the end of the year.

Now we're going to be talking about food traditions going from winter to spring and the religious festivals that we have around here - Easter being one of those well known. 
And eggs will come up.

01:16 
Mariya
Eggs, we'll be talking about eggs.

01:18
Ed
We will be talking about eggs quite a lot. And actually starting with eggs, Mariya, I know that you had an important tradition, growing up in Bulgaria, right? Tell me about that.

01:26 
Mariya
In Bulgaria and actually in other, I think Eastern European countries, because it's a Orthodox, Christian Orthodox tradition. We do the painting of the eggs, which is usually done either the Thursday morning or the Saturday morning, before Easter. It has a lot of symbolism the idea of painting an egg. But now it's become more of a fun activity, let's say, for the family. Usually kids are involved. 
At least for me, growing up it was really something to look forward to around the holidays and around Easter. 
So how it works is that you boil some eggs, so hard boiled eggs, you have a few, usually jars of water in which you dissolve some food colours, food colourants safe for food consumption.
And then you dye these eggs. You you dip the egg inside the jar, in the colour that you wish to get. And then we actually can play also with the colours, which we did was take some cotton and maybe tap the egg with the colour. 
The more eggs you have the better. These are also then used to maybe exchange between family and friends.
The end purpose is, actually to do, something that we call egg tapping.

02:49
Ed
Okay. That sounds exciting!

01:26 
Mariya
Yes. It's lot of fun. 
And, I never realized that it's a peculiar tradition. 
Maybe because when you grow up with it, it's really part of how you celebrate. 
It's basically a game.
Let's say, everybody chooses their egg in the family, and then you have to tap. One person taps one end of the egg, and then whoever doesn't get their egg cracked is kind of the winner and has the fighter egg so called which means it's just, like a good omen for the year ahead. It means that you would have good luck, but then the person who gets their egg cracked actually gets to eat their egg.
So they're also a winner in a way.

03:33
Ed
And I guess by eating the egg you know also they might not have cheated. I guess there could be ways to cheat by getting something in there that would make your egg stronger.

03:42 
Mariya
Indeed. Most people don't cheat, I must say, but it is definitely a possibility that you might get also fake egg or, a chocolate egg or something.

03:57
Ed
Could you show us Maria what this is all about in terms of dyeing the eggs?

04:02 
Mariya
Yes. I would be very happy to. It's very exciting to do it since I'm away from home. Let's say for me, it's also the opening of the Easter season. 
Ed, as I mentioned, we have our jar of water that we've prepared, beforehand.
This is hot water and it's good practice to put some vinegar in it, which makes the colour kind of stick to the shell of the egg. So we have this. 
And then here I have some egg colourant or food colouring. We can choose from.

04:34
Ed
We've got four colours there. I think that looks like green, blue, orange and that looks like purple.

04:38 
Mariya
I think it's purple. 
Maybe just to mention to you and our listeners and viewers, traditionally the first egg would be painted red, which symbolizes also the blood of Jesus. 
Actually traditionally all eggs I think were supposed to be red. But as time passes, more food colouring became available.
Now we have all kind of, colours of the rainbow and you can also put some stickers and some decorations to make it even more customized.

05:16
Ed
To make it even more egg-cellent.

05:18 
Mariya
Egg-cellent exactly!
(soft laugh)

05:21
Ed
Let's go with one of these. What should we go for?

05:23 
Mariya
I leave it up to you to choose.

05:25
Ed
I think maybe a purple colour. No, let's go with blue.

05:30
Mariya
Okay. So I take the blue. How it works is you just put it into...

05:38
Ed
Oh, wow. Look at that. It's already going.

05:40
Mariya
You have different types of dye.
It could be also, liquid dye. It could be, powder. And actually the most natural way...let me just stir this a bit. 
The most natural way to dye your eggs and how it used to be done traditionally before all this food colouring became industrially available, was to use food ingredients, for example the peels of the onion, you would boil them so they release this purple red colour or saffron. This was the traditional way to do it. 
(spoon against glass sound)
Okay, it's quite blue!

06:18
Ed
Now you've got the colour and you dip the egg in? How does it work with the colouring of the egg?

06:23
Mariya
Let me leave this for a second. Maybe for our listeners to say that we have this very electric blue.
I had boiled before that our egg. So this is a hard boiled egg, then it's very simple. You would take the egg - depending on how careful you want to be - put it in the spoon and then just dip it inside.

06:57
Ed
And there it's going to soak up the colour.

06:58
Mariya
You can use more than one egg just to save some time. 
I hope there are not too many Bulgarians watching judging my egg dying technique because this is how we did it at my home, in my household. 
You would just dip the egg and the longer it stays, the better. You could already see it starts picking up some colour.
This looks like a bit more greenish.

07:25
Ed
And the longer you leave it in there the more colour it'll absorb.

07:27
Mariya
The longer you leave it in there and the more it absorbs colour. Maybe we can actually leave it for a bit and then at the end of the episode we can check on it and see if it got bluer. You can take you can see it's taking up some colour.

07:32
Ed
While that's brewing in there. Let's talk some more about eggs. 
It's interesting that this tradition goes back a long time, I think it even goes back as far as medieval times.
And then more recently, you had, jewelers who were decorating eggs, most famously the Faberge eggs, which were given as a gift from the Russian tsar to his wife and that became then a tradition.
Talking about traditions...we love quizzes on this podcast and I've got a quiz for you.

08:16
Mariya
Yeah. I'm ready.

08:18
Ed
This has to do with eggs and different egg traditions.
I've got four traditions here, but one of them I've made up, it is not true. Okay? 
The other three are all true traditions around the eggs.

08:30
Mariya
That's exciting! I'm really looking forward to it.

08:18
Ed
Here we go. 
In the US, the Easter egg roll is held on the white House South Lawn each Easter Monday for children and their parents and it's hosted by the US president and the First lady.

08:49
Mariya
Let me think about it.

08:51
Ed
Then on Easter Monday, the residents of Haut, in France, they crack more than 4500 eggs into a gigantic pan to create a massive Easter omelet that serves over a thousand people. Number three, in parts of Germany, it's common to decorate an Easter egg tree called an Ostereierbaum by hanging hundreds of painted eggs on tree branches.
Number four: in some villages in Italy, there's the Festival of the Golden Egg, which sees villagers search for golden egg made of edible gold leaf, and whoever finds it becomes the egg king or queen for the rest of the year.

09:30
Mariya
Wow Ed. Did you make one up youself?

09:32
Ed
One on these is made up.
(soft laugh)

09:36
Mariya
Who knows! I think it's very tricky with traditions because all cultures and countries have these very peculiar traditions. I honestly think they might all be true. 
I think the one about Germany, from my knowledge of German, it sounds like it could be true.

09:52
Ed
That's true.

09:55
Mariya
That would be true. 
The one about France making the omelette I think it would also be true. I mean, I don't know, France-omelette, although maybe you're trying to trick me there, but I would assume it's also true.

10:05
Ed
This is also true.

10:07
Mariya
About the very first one I know there's a tradition also over there around thanksgiving and this is also organized, so there might as well be something around Easter.
And I've been living in Italy for quite some time now, and I've never heard of the Golden Leaf, so my guess would be that the red herring is the last one.

10:31
Ed
You are right. The final one I've made up and I've also not come across a golden egg. Although I think it sounds nice.

10:38
Mariya
Maybe you start a new tradition Ed now.

10:40
Ed
Why not!
For myself, growing up, going out to hunt eggs was the main tradition. The magic Easter Bunny would leave eggs around and the children would go and collect them. 
I think, as we mentioned in the edition we had around the time at the end of the year, there's lots of symbolism around this time of year with food.
Rebirth and new life, abundance and all these kind of things are related to why we have bunnies for symbolism, chicks, lamb is so important both as food, but also the symbol of it. 
These all symbolize both religious significance for rebirth, Christ being risen from the tomb, even an egg symbolizing a kind of tomb rebirth.

11:36
Mariya
Actually, the egg tapping game that I mentioned earlier, the really symbolic meaning behind is this: the egg symbolizing the rebirth and then the cracking of the egg as the opening of the tomb of Jesus. It's something that you take for granted you don't really reflect so much on the symbolism behind it, and it's become kind of a norm to celebrate in this way.
But it's true that there are deep symbolic meanings that are kind of intertwined in our food traditions and how we celebrate and how we consume food as well.

12:15
Ed
Some of them go back to medieval times and some of them are more recent. 
I didn't know, for example, that the Colomba here in Italy that takes the shape of a dove is relatively recent, it doesn't go back as far. But there are some foods that have been eaten traditionally for many years. 
Maybe we can also mention the food safety aspect of eggs, which is very important. 
You were telling me that you have a personal story actually about eggs and the importance of food safety.

12:48
Mariya
Indeed I do.
It's something that happened to me in early childhood. I was maybe five, six years old. I don't have clear recollections of the exact event, but the story goes like this. 
One morning, normal morning, I would wake up with symptoms of what you would consider to be a food poisoning, or maybe a stomach flu.
My mom, who was a doctor, very often would deal with these kind of things at home so it would be very rare that, we would go to a doctor, even, a general practitioner. But on that occasion, I remember she was like, "oh no, this is something serious, we need to get you to a hospital immediately".
Long story short, I was admitted to one hospital and then another specifically about infectious diseases and my symptoms, which were actually progressively getting worse and worse then were traced back to possible case of salmonella, which in turn investigating and thinking a bit about where could I have gotten the infection from, were traced back to some eggs that were purchased from a local producer, so off the market chain.
I was telling you, after I recovered, I remember maybe Easter actually was kind of one of the few exceptions in my childhood and adolescence that I was kind of being allowed to have an egg, maybe after egg tapping, as a way to celebrate. 
I became comfortable consuming again eggs maybe a later stage and university where you have to be creative with cooking, eggs is an easy thing to cook. 
But yes, it definitely creates an association for me with eggs and danger.

14:37
Ed
It shows how important, especially for more vulnerable like children, how important good storage of eggs is making sure that they haven't gone off.
To do this, it's very important that they are kept at a constant temperature, cool temperature. 
I was reading that if they're kept in the package, it stops the egg from taking on the flavors and aromas around them, so often you keep them in the package. 
Unless you would like, an exotic flavour, like a truffle flavour or something and then chefs do that. 
They put them together with some kind of spice, etc.. But the most important thing is to keep them cool, keep them stored well, and then check that the egg is still fine. 
To do that, you can put them in water and if they stay at the bottom, sunk at the bottom and do not rise up, like our egg there, we can see that it's at the bottom.
If it were to float up to the surface, we know that we probably shouldn't consume it, because there's an issue.
There's air in the egg and that it's gone off.

15:48
Mariya
In Bulgaria, when we celebrate, because you do these big batches, in the case of colouring the eggs for example, you sometimes do many eggs because you also have people over coming and guests and a lot of people put a lot of effort into it, as you mentioned, the Faberge eggs are really kind of decorating them to a point that they look like a decoration for the house.
Very often these are exposed, maybe for a prolonged period of time could be when you have guests over that need to pick the egg that they want to do the egg tapping with. 
Also remembering to still store them in the fridge, even though they're hard boiled and painted, they're still eggs, they're not toys.
It's still food that is potentially dangerous.

16:32
Ed
The egg itself has a form of protection, so it's better not to wash the egg because natural eggs will have a form of protection against bacteria as well, which is interesting. There's a lot of talk, actually about eggs right now for various reasons.
One is that there's an outbreak of avian influenza, which is very serious around the world and it's actually led to egg shortages in the US which have been in the news, prices of eggs going up. 
That's one issue that we deal with at EFSA related to combating avian influenza, etc., and tracking it. There's also issues related to the welfare of the chickens and the hens.
We came up with an opinion in 2023 about laying hen welfare and one of the recommendations is that cages are to be avoided wherever possible for the welfare of the laying hens. Right down to us as consumer and what we do with the eggs also alters how good our food is, because while we may want to keep them in the fridge to cook with the eggs, we want to take them out and have them at room temperature, because that's when the magic happens with the chemistry of the egg, the butter, if you have butter, if you have milk.
That's when the cooking process often advise you in the recipes to have room temperature. 
You cook Mariya, is this something that you take into account when you're preparing?

18:13
Mariya
I do bake, especially during the Covid pandemic. I did have a few attempts at baking.
I think it's interesting what you mentioned about the fluctuation in temperature as well. I try to be mindful of this.

18:29
Ed
Should we take a look at what is going on with our egg?

18:31
Mariya
I was going to suggest the same! Shall we have a look at our egg? The blue is even bluer. I think it's quite definitely completely dissolved.
Actually the colour now is a bit more greenish, that's interesting. I think it really depends also on the shell of the egg like how the colour that you have is being absorbed. 
I think we got the good result overall.

18:56
Ed
That's beautiful. I think you've done a good job.

18:58
Mariya
Thank you!
(soft laugh)

19:00
Ed
You're ready for that now!

19:02
Mariya
I'm ready for Easter. 
Then what you would do, you would just put it on a plate somewhere and then let it dry.
This is the final result. This is a very basic way to do it, as I mentioned earlier, people get very creative and have different patterns sometimes.
You just need 20 more of these and then you can do egg tapping and then you're ready to celebrate. 
Stored at the right temperature, of course, after you've dyed them. Good to put it in the fridge.

19:39
Ed
Then you can find out if your egg is a fighter egg or not.

19:42
Mariya
Exactly. And if not, don't worry. Then you get to eat your egg, so it's still fun.

19:50
Ed
Okay, well, thanks so much, Mariya, for introducing me to this really nice, tradition. To our listeners and our viewers, please tell us your traditions at this time of year. Drop us a note. We'd be interested to hear them. 
Thank you very much for watching for listening. Please engage with the podcast, wherever you find it and that's all from myself. 
Thank you to you Mariya.

20:19
Mariya
Thank you Ed, thanks everyone.

19:50
Ed
See you again next time on Science on the menu. Goodbye.