The egg is one of the kitchen’s marvels, and one of nature’s. Its simple, placid shape houses an everyday miracle: the transformation of a bland bag of nutrients into a living, breathing, vigorous creature. The egg has loomed large as a symbol for the enigmatic origins of animals, of humans, of gods, of the earth, of the entire cosmos. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Indian Rg Veda, Greek Orphic mysteries, and creation myths throughout the world have been inspired by the eruption of life from within a lifeless, blank shell.