Egg Substitute Calculator

Replacing eggs works only if you first identify what the egg was doing. Eggs perform three largely separate jobs. Binding comes from white proteins, chiefly ovalbumin, which set into a network between about 62 and 70 degrees C. Moisture and tenderness come from the roughly 75 percent water content plus yolk lecithin and fat, which emulsify and shorten gluten strands. Leavening comes from whipped whites, whose proteins stabilize air cells that expand in the oven. A substitute chosen for the wrong job fails predictably: applesauce will not hold a cookie together, and flax will not lift a sponge. Sizing matters too, since these amounts are keyed to the USDA large egg, about 50 grams without the shell, against 38 grams for small, 44 for medium, 56 for extra large and 63 for jumbo. Each substitute works by a different mechanism, which sets its limits. A flax or chia egg, one tablespoon of ground seed hydrated in three tablespoons of water for five minutes, forms a viscous mucilage that mimics binding but adds a nutty flavor and no lift. Applesauce, mashed banana and yogurt at a quarter cup per egg supply water, sugars and pectin or protein for moisture, but can make the crumb gummy beyond two eggs' worth. Blended silken tofu contributes soy protein that coagulates on heating, suiting dense cakes and custards. Aquafaba, the viscous chickpea cooking liquid, is the only common substitute that whips, since its saponins and leached proteins form a stable foam. Replace at most two or three eggs per recipe; beyond that the structural role of egg protein cannot be reproduced.

Cooking without eggs began as an economy measure rather than a dietary choice. Wartime and Depression-era cookbooks in Britain and the United States printed eggless cakes because eggs were rationed or expensive, and the wartime chocolate cake later known as wacky cake or crazy cake, leavened by vinegar reacting with baking soda instead of eggs, dates from that period. Commercial dried egg replacers followed, and Ener-G Foods of Seattle brought a potato-starch and leavening-based powdered egg replacer to market in the 1970s for people with egg allergy, one of the major recognized food allergens later named in the United States Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004. The seed-based methods spread through vegan cooking in the 1980s and 1990s, when ground flaxseed hydrated in water became a standard binder in natural-foods and vegetarian cookbooks. The most recent addition is documented precisely. In early 2014 the French cook Joel Roessel noted that the liquid from canned chickpeas and other legumes could be foamed like egg white, and in March 2015 the American software engineer Goose Wohlt demonstrated that the same liquid alone would make a stable vegan meringue. Wohlt and members of an online community coined the name aquafaba, from the Latin for water and bean, and the technique spread worldwide within months, which is unusually fast for a kitchen method. Subsequent food-science work attributed the foaming to leached albumin-type proteins and saponins from the chickpeas.