Wishing Well Eggs

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name’s Kelsey. I’m calling from Washington, DC.

And I have a question about eggs, eggs, eggs. Yeah, so you know the way that you can prepare eggs?

Where you like take a piece of bread and you cut a hole in the middle and you crack the egg into it.

I have talked randomly about eggs over the past few years with a lot of my friends.

And none of them call those eggs the same thing that my family calls them.

What do you call them? whats What’s the family name for them? Yeah, it’s wishing well eggs.

Wishing well eggs. And what do your friends call them? Yeah, so I’ve heard a bunch of different

Things. I’ve heard egg in a basket, egg in a hole. I’ve heard toad in a hole. One person said

Pocket eggs, and then somebody said called them kaya, K-A-Y-A, which I’ve never heard before myself.

I haven’t heard that one either.

Yeah, the last one’s new for me.

I haven’t heard that.

And this is when you take a piece of bread and you cut the hole out and you put the egg in there and then what, you fry it up?

Yeah, yeah, you fry, you flip it on both sides.

And what do you do with the hole that you cut out?

You put it aside and when your eggs are done, you dip it in the runny yolk.

Right, right.

Yeah, some people call that egg in a hat, as a matter of fact.

But yeah, this is one of those simple, simple, simple dishes.

Anybody can make it.

And so it’s not the kind of thing that you have to spell out with an official name in a cookbook.

And so as we’ve been talking about, there are lots and lots of names for this.

Egg in a basket, egg in a nest, in a cage, in a window.

I think you mentioned egg in a pocket.

Yeah, some people do call it toad in a hole.

But our British friends would beg to differ with that name.

But there are a lot of names that have to do with what it looks like.

I grew up with it being called Pirate’s Eye, and other people call it Camel’s Eyes or Bull’s Eye.

Yeah, because of the way it looks.

And some people call it Bird’s Nest or Popeye or One-Eyed Pete or One-Eyed Jack or Cowboy Eggs and Knothole Eggs.

I really like that, you know, like a knothole in a plank of pine.

But you mentioned wishing well eggs.

And I think that that probably has to do with that whole list of names that have to do with the egg being inside of something.

Because I have heard of egg in a well.

And I’m thinking that that’s probably the same idea.

You know, you toss your pennies in a wishing well and make a wish.

And you put that egg in the well of the toast.

So that’s the, I have seen very rarely wishing well eggs, but I suspect that that’s the connection.

What do you think, Grant?

One more, gas house eggs, which I learned from a book, not in my life.

But yeah, I think this is, we’ll probably get a dozen more when the calls and emails start coming in.

Wink-a-boo eggs, baby in a buggy, donut egg, belly button egg.

Belly button egg, I like that one.

But very rarely wishing well eggs, but I bet it has to do with the egg being down in that container that is the bread.

What do you think, Kelsey?

Yeah, I mean, that sounds right.

It seems like not the kind of thing that my mom would make up whole cloth.

So I was like, I wonder if anybody else in the universe says this.

Yeah, well, we will hear from listeners who use that term if they do.

But I have seen it occasionally, very rarely, though.

Well, Kelsey, thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your thoughts and memories.

It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Kelsey.

Well, whether you call it a hocus pocus egg or a cartwheel or something else, we’d love to hear from you.

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