Ask the Eggsperts

Your questions about eggs with Oxford Emeritus Professor of Eggs, Trelawney Squires

DID cavemen use to eat eggs, and if so did they have them scrambled? And if they did, how did they scramble them as I understand egg whisks were not invented until the 18th century?

Mr S. Cooper, Elmley Castle

*That’s a lot of questions, Mr Cooper, so let’s take them one at a time. Firstly, yes, cavemen ate eggs, and we know this since shells have been found in the midden of Vistehola, an Iron Age cave in Norway. Archaeologists assume that the eggs were scrambled since frying them would have required a flat bottomed pan that does not appear in the archaeological record for another three thousand years. And it is most likely that they scrambled the eggs in a dish using a bunch of twigs tied together at the top – a forerunner of the modern whisk – before pouring them into an earthenware pot heated in a fire to cook, and then had them on a nice bit of toast.

THEY say that the Egyptian Boy King Tutankhamun had a skull the thickness of an eggshell. But what bird’s shell were they talking about? And was his bonce pointy at the end like a bird’s egg?

Howard Carter, Leeds

*It is safe to say that it would probably have been a bird native to the area where the Boy King’s tomb was discovered, but this leaves us with a problem. If they were referring to an ostrich egg, then King Tut’s noggin would have been a completely normal 4mm thick. If on the other hand they were talking about the tiny Egyptian sunbird, he would have had a napper just 0.4mm thick, and it’s unlikely he would have survived putting his crown on in the morning. For that reason, it would probably be the egg of a medium-sized Egyptian bird, like a hoopoe, or a glossy ibis. Archaeologists are unable to answer the question as to whether or not his head was pointy, as all pictures of King Tut show him wearing a hat.

IF YOU fed a chicken with plutonium, would it lay radioactive eggs that would cook themselves?

Prof. B Cox, Geneva

*If you fed a chicken plutonium, it wouldn’t lay any eggs at all, radioactive or otherwise, as it would be dead within minutes of ingesting the element. However, were it by some chance to survive long enough to lay an egg, that egg would indeed be radioactive, but it is unlikely to be completely cooked. The white may have started to set a bit, but it would be nowhere near being hard-boiled. But even if you did like your eggs on the runny side, you would be advised not to eat it as it would contain 100,000 times the radioactive dose it would be safe to be exposed to. Better leave it in the eggcup and just eat the soldiers.