How Can Rotten Eggs Be Identified?

You don’t need an expiry date to find out if an egg is still fresh and ready to eat. Instead, you can use a simple trick. You can spot rotten eggs by placing them in a glass of cold water. If the egg is on the bottom, it’s still fresh. If, on the other hand, it stands almost upright, it is a bit older and should be eaten as soon as possible. It is best to only use it for heated dishes such as frittata. A delicious and decorative recipe idea for this: egg in a glass. Or as a delicious classic: eggs in mustard sauce or scrambled eggs with bacon.

Eggs that are no longer fresh can be identified by the fact that they float on the surface of the water. Such an egg is already several weeks old or was stored incorrectly and should not be eaten, but thrown away immediately. If an egg is really rotten, you will also notice this at the latest from the penetrating smell that hits you as soon as you open the shell.

The secret behind the trick to tell rotten eggs from fresh eggs is the air pockets inside the egg. These increase if the egg is stored incorrectly or for a long period of time. Eventually, the buoyancy of the trapped air is so great that the egg floats to the surface of the water.

If you want to check the age of a boiled egg, you have to cut it open. Then the position of the yolk reveals how fresh it is. If the yolk is in the middle and only a small air pocket is visible, the egg is still fresh. In older eggs, on the other hand, the yolk shifts towards the shell, and the air chamber is significantly enlarged, as in the raw egg.