Whether they are made of chocolate or come from a hen, no food symbolises Easter quite like the egg.
While most of us never stray from the familiar chicken egg, perhaps we shouldn’t be putting all our eggs in one basket.
This Easter, MailOnline has gathered up some of the most unusual eggs we could find on supermarket shelves to see if any are worth shelling out for.
And from acorn-sized quail eggs to guaranteed double-yolkers, you might just be able to find a new breakfast favourite.
But at up to £8 for a single egg, are these egg-spensive eggs really any better?
MailOnline gathered together some of the best alternative eggs we could find on supermarket shelves to see if any were worth shelling out for this Easter
The lineup was (left to right): double-yolkers, duck eggs, quail eggs, standard chicken eggs, and a goose egg
The test
After scouring the local supermarkets for unusual eggs, the final contestants for our trials were: Goose, quail, duck, double-yolkers, and a standard free-range chicken as a control.
For the purest test of egg flavour and texture, all the eggs were cooked to soft-boiled for whatever time their packaging recommended.
This ranged from a fairly lengthy 10-minute soak for the goose egg to just a minute in the water for the quail.
The eggs were added to already boiling water one after another so that they all finished at the same time.
However, even this initial boiling process yielded some interesting results as the double-yoked eggs seemed to be particularly prone to cracking in the pan.
We boiled a few more to see what was going wrong and found that two out of three cracked in the water.
It wasn’t clear why this would be the case, but perhaps consider boiling at a lower, more gentle heat if you do try these.
Once boiled, all the eggs were tasted and ranked according to the three most important factors: appearance, taste, and the all-important ‘dunkability’ factor with some slices of buttered toast.
All the eggs were soft-boiled to give a level playing field for flavour and texture testing
Every egg was boiled for as long as the packet recommended. This ranged from 10 minutes for the goose egg (front) to just a minute for the quail eggs (right)
Chicken egg (the control)
All scientific experiments need a control and, in our case that was a standard chicken egg.
These are, unsurprisingly, Britain’s most popular type of egg with 34.6 million eaten every single day.
Eggs are also one of the few foods for which Britain is almost entirely self-sufficient.
On average, about 11 billion eggs are laid by hens in the UK each year, making the UK 86 per cent self-sufficient.
Chicken eggs are also a great source of the protein and nutrients you need in your day with 8.3g of protein per egg.
Some studies have even suggested that people who more eggs in the week tend to have lower BMI and ‘healthier body composition’.
When it comes to the flavour, you probably don’t need me to explain what an egg is like.
The particular eggs we tested had pleasant coloured yolks and a decent flavour, but ultimately these were just eggs.
This, along with their nutritional values, will be the benchmark from which we will evaluate all the other eggs in the lineup.
A standard egg was pretty much exactly what you would expect, this would be the baseline for comparing all the other eggs in the lineup
Double-yolker
If you’re looking for a straightforward upgrade to the standard chicken egg, a double-yolker is a pretty obvious choice.
These eggs, as the name suggests, are standard chicken eggs that happen to have two yolks rather than one.
These marvellous eggs might seem like some sort of Easter miracle, but they are actually mistakes.
Double-yolkers occur when a hen’s egg production cycles aren’t quite properly synched up.
They are more common in spring and with younger, less experienced hens who can sometimes release two yolks at once.
They are fairly unusual in hens but not so rare that you can’t now buy a box of six guaranteed doubles from most major supermarkets.
But if you were expecting a double-sized egg you might be a little disappointed, since the yolks tend to be a little smaller than normal.
The double-yolked eggs claim to contain a guaranteed two yolks per egg. They were a little larger than a standard egg and slightly more expensive
A glance at the nutritional information confirms these suspicions, as they actually contain significantly less fat and a little less protein than a standard egg.
However, nutrition aside, these were a very fun alternative to your bog standard breakfast.
Despite having a lovely deep orange yolk, the taste was only a little better than a single-yolked egg.
However, the dunking experience was top-notch with an almost volcanic eruption of yolk.
And, as a fun bonus, once half the egg has been eaten the second yolk is revealed, letting you start the process again.
Although I suspect that these would have been better fried to show off the two yolks a bit better, they were nonetheless a great choice.
Double yolkers were a fun potential alternative for an Easter treat. They tasted fine but had the best dunkability of any egg we tested
Duck eggs
To take our first steps beyond the world of chicken eggs, we decided to try out some duck eggs.
These are commonly available in a few supermarkets and are quite a bit more expensive than your regular egg.
However, for a few extra pence per egg, duck eggs could be a really great Easter treat.
Even raw, these eggs are already quite interesting with their vaguely translucent shells that catch the light in quite a fascinating manner.
Perhaps it was an effect of the half dozen eggs I had eaten, but they almost appeared to be glowing from within.
In any case, once they had been boiled, the taste was no less impressive.
The shell was distinctly harder to chip through, requiring a decent bit of force, but the results were well worth the effort.
The duck eggs had slightly translucent shells which gave them a quite fascinating glow when raw
The whites are firmer and have a little more bite than a chicken’s egg, with an almost snappy firmness.
The yolk on the other hand was perfectly soft and had a fantastic flavour – far deeper and richer than you might expect from an egg.
This might be in virtue of the slightly higher fat content in duck eggs which have 9.3 of fat per 100g.
However, the health-conscious among you can still rest easy since one duck egg contains almost twice as much omega-3 fatty acid as a chicken’s.
Overall, for their fantastic texture, rich flavour and colour, as well as for the fact they are just quite fun, duck eggs were the winner’s choice.
In my opinion, if you want an alternative to chicken eggs, duck is definitely the way to go.
Duck eggs were definitely the winner’s choice when it came to flavour and texture
Goose egg
After that glowing review comes one egg I would definitely advise you to skip this easter.
From the outside, the goose egg is extremely impressive.
Not only does it come in its own display box like some of bizarre souvenir, but it is also around 2.5 times bigger than a hen’s egg.
But at £7.39 (at least at Whole Foods where one could be found at short notice) you would really hope that this would be something special.
And after boiling the egg for 10 minutes, which was the lower end of the recommended time, anticipation was certainly high.
The shell was so thick that chipping into it felt more like palaeontology than breakfast which certainly added another layer of excitement.
Yet once I had finally broken prized off the top, the results were decidedly underwhelming.
The goose egg cost £7.39 and only comes in a pack of one. This price and presentation perhaps put our expectations a little high
The egg had a vaguely unpleasant odour and the taste was not much better.
While the duck egg’s white had been pleasantly firm, this was cloyingly thick.
Friends who were coerced into trying some described it as ‘claggy’, ‘like clay’, ‘chalky’ and variously unpleasant.
The yolk, rather than being an appealing deep gold, was a pale dandelion yellow.
On the plus side, if you happen to be a very wealthy bodybuilder, goose eggs are a fantastic source of protein.
A single goose egg could give you 266 kcals and 20g of protein – almost three times more than a standard egg.
But, based on the flavour and the absolute faff of cooking one, I would still recommend just eating three chicken eggs.
The goose egg was a severe disappointment in taste, texture, and dunkability. Definitely not worth almost £8
Quail egg
The final egg choice in our testing is definitely the most fun, but potentially not the most practical.
At about nine to 11g per egg, quail eggs are about five times smaller than your average chicken egg.
Yet in that small package they pack a surprising amount of flavour and nutrition.
And, at only 14 calories and 1g of fat per egg, you could pretty much eat these like popcorn.
The eggs themselves are so small that they only take a minute to cook to a soft-boiled state.
However, if you are planning on cooking these at home I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
When soft-boiled, the quail eggs’ size made them extremely difficult to peel or eat without crushing them.
And, perhaps due to the slightly elastic nature of their shells, the eggs also had a habit of popping in an unfortunately pimple-like manner and spraying yolk over the table.
Quail eggs are only about 10g per egg, meaning you can cook up a small handful for a fun snack
Quail eggs were delicious and a really fun alternative but they were quite difficult to eat especially when soft-boiled
But, if you can get that image out of your head, they were some of the most delicious eggs tasted.
The whites were tender and packed with flavour and the yolks had a very nice clean taste with no overly eggy notes.
Unfortunately, their dunkability was essentially nil unless you have very small pieces of bread and a lot of patience.
Because they are so small you also don’t get a tremendous amount for your money, coming in at 33 pence per tiny egg.
Overall, a highly enjoyable treat but probably not the best if you’re looking for an alternative egg and soldiers pick.
What’s the verdict?
Ultimately, while I find it hard to imagine ditching the beloved hen’s egg, I wouldn’t write off the alternatives altogether.
With the exception of foose eggs, which were an absolute waste of quite a lot of money, any of these could make a fun treat once in a while.
Quail eggs were extremely fun as a little treat and they could make a novel change for an Easter celebration.
However, they were just a bit too fiddly and expensive to really be a proper meal by themselves.
And, while double-yolkers were nice they also weren’t necessarily exciting enough to justify the extra cost.
Duck eggs, meanwhile, were definitely worth splashing out for once in a while if you really want to treat yourself this Easter.
