Collecting Egg Cups

If you’ve had hens for more than, oh, say two days, you start to accumulate chicken tschotskes (a Yiddish word for useless decorative stuff.) I admit it, I have hen-themed items, but try limit the display so you don’t think OMG, Chickens! when you first walk through the door.

I do have a collection of egg cups. An egg cup is a little stand used to serve a soft-boiled egg. The nice thing about egg cups is they can be tucked into a cabinet.

Here in America, egg cups have fallen out of favor. When was the last time you saw a soft-boiled egg on a restaurant menu or even made one for breakfast for yourself? It’s something to start eating again. Quite healthy. No butter, no fattening omelet fillings. Just the egg and maybe dry toast “soldiers” (toast cut into sticks for dipping into the egg.)

If you start eating soft-boiled eggs, you have an excuse to buy these:

or this charmer:

Look at these shapes and colors:

Still not convinced that you want to eat soft-boiled eggs just to collect egg cups? In the 1930s, double egg cups became popular. Hard-cooked eggs were chopped, seasoned with salt and pepper and served in these larger dishes. The trend lasted into the 50s when these Atomic Era cups were made.

If you don’t want to go searching on eBay and at flea markets for the vintage ones, you can always buy a simple white cup. But then you might want to get an egg cozy to keep your breakfast warm while the toast cooks.

(Thank you to my friend Wendy for sending me this little egg “hat.”)

Comments:

  1. Very nice cups. But..hmm…I don’t remember my Bubbie ever using that yiddish word for her things in her curio cabinet. Acourse to her they were her “treasures” and they were to me. Acourse it’s been 15 years since I have even spoken yiddish and longer before that I could even understand it. So my memory is quite rusty. Thanks for the beautiful egg cups and a new word for my own junk collection. For me it’s cats, I have cats in almost in anything, and shells. I just love dust collectors I get from garage sales and from deals I find online.

  2. Ha! I had forgotten how demented that egg cosy looked. That was back when I still knitted, before crossing to the dark side of crochet… I’ll have to do you some more.
    An Israeli friend, who has older relatives who speak quite old-fashioned Yiddish as well as Hebrew, says that tschotske used to mean an young unmarried boy at a wedding! ‘Decorative and useless’. Hmmm.

  3. I so love the first pair of egg cups. I don’t get my chickens until March and already I am collecting all thing’s chicken. What hope is there for me?

  5. how long do you cook eggs to make them soft-boiled? this sounds like my new favorite meal as ever since i was a kid i have LOVED “dippy eggs” (eggs over easy with toast).

  6. Ah, one of those questions that can get me into trouble – everyone has an opinion! I like my eggs a tad on the firm side, and I don’t boil mine. I bring the water to a hard boil, turn of the heat, put in the egg and cover. Done that way, I cook it for 3 minutes. Those who like to boil their eggs will likely say 2 minutes. Anyone want to chime in here? By the way, one of my favorite way to eat an egg is to poach, or soft-cook and scoop out, and put on half of a ripe avocado. So many layers of silky and smooth.

    • I’ve been meaning to tell you! I tried this, finally, and have to say that I think I’m in between two minutes and three minutes. They seem most perfect for my purposes at 2.5 minutes :) Thanks so much for this! Oh, and I have a very cute little cow egg cup from Thailand that I simply adore.

  7. Love the second one.

    Ahhhh the accumulation of all things chicken…
    Years ago I had to request family and friends to stop buying it for me.

  8. Terry,

    I am a new fan of your blog (first hens will arrive in April!). We live in Canada near Algonquin Provincial Park and so have built an insulated coop.

    I wonder if your friend Wendy has a pattern for that little hen egg cozy. I would love to knit one.

    • Yes, I would love to have that pattern too!! How about it Wendy? ;-)

      • It’s so long since I knitted! I just made it up as I went along. I’ll get a crochet pattern up on my blog soon, but for knitting I just did it ‘in the round’ on four needles as one would knit a sock, then just decreased occasionally by knitting two stitches together and then sewing up the top. The wings are just two little oblongs stitched on, and the comb just red wool knotted on. Crochet is so much easier and quicker – I doubt I will ever go back…

  9. Hello Terry,

    I am a new fan of your blog – learn so much and enjoy the flock.

    We live in Canada near Algonquin provincial Park and so have built an isulated coop. We expect to have our first chicks in April.

    I’m wondering if your friend, Wendy, has a pattern for that little gray hen egg cozy… I woupd love to knit one.

  10. As a kid I remember when I would sleep over my friends house it was always a soft boiled egg in an egg cup and strips of toast. It was her mother’s specialty(not that it is that complicated) I thought it was the best!

  12. Thanks for sharing these! I just started collecting egg cups (I have 2 antique) and am excited by the possibilities. I love your little charmer cup!

  13. I love those old egg cups. I have a few cute ones and a few downright creepy ones. Didn’t some of those face ones scare children out of eating eggs?? I also like egg coddlers. They’re somewhat harder to find but I have a few I really like. That Welsummer egg sure is striking with those speckles.

  14. We have a small collection of egg cups/cozies. The one Cozy I keep meaning to make is the Death of Rats egg cozy. It’s a character from the Discworld series of books. It’s a free pattern on Ravelry.

  15. Hi, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you stop it, any plugin or anything you can suggest? I get so much lately it’s driving me crazy so any support is very much appreciated.

    • I get them too. You can change your settings on responses so that the commenter has to copy a hidden word. It keeps the bots out. I don’t do that, but my IT guy has other ways (all mysterious to me.)