Specialty Eggs & Preserves

Beyond the everyday chicken egg, a range of specialty eggs offer different sizes, flavours, and culinary properties. Duck eggs are the most common alternative — they’re larger than chicken eggs, with bigger, richer yolks and slightly more albumen, which makes them excellent for baking, custards, and pasta dough. Quail eggs are tiny and delicate, often used as garnishes, in canapés, or in Asian dishes. Goose eggs are larger still, with a robust flavour.

This category also includes preserved eggs — most notably century eggs (pidan), a Chinese specialty where duck or chicken eggs are preserved in a clay-ash mixture for weeks, transforming the white into a dark, translucent jelly and the yolk into a creamy, pungent centre. Salted duck eggs, another Asian staple, are cured in brine or packed in salted charcoal.

In Australia, duck eggs are increasingly available at farmers’ markets, Asian grocers, and some supermarkets. Quail eggs can be found at Asian grocers and specialty food shops.