Last Updated on January 3, 2018

Marilee e-mailed the Kitchen Shrink that she always buys jumbo eggs and wondered if it is all right to use them when a recipe calls for large eggs.

Most recipes call for large eggs because that is the size that is purchased most often in American supermarkets. If you are making an egg dish such as an omelet, fried or scrambled eggs, or hard cooked eggs, using larger or smaller eggs will not usually be a problem but if the eggs are going into a baked product it will interfere with the balance of  the recipe and the results may be too soft or too firm and dry. For example, if a cake recipe calls for 3 large eggs, you would need 2 jumbo or 4 small. Go to the American Egg Board’s Eggcyclopedia for a chart that will help you substitute different size eggs in recipes. You’ll find a lot of other interesting information about eggs there as well.