It’s Eggcellent: National Egg Month

May 21, 2025

It’s National Egg Month. When prices are high like they’ve been this year, one of the most important things, in my opinion, in regards to eggs is their safe transport. It just so happens that the Mapes’ Safety Cushion Egg Flats were produced in my hometown, Griffith, Indiana. I find this to be most eggcellent.

As a lover or eggs, I celebrate the wonders and diverse uses of the product. However, all eggs have to start somewhere, and that is with their laying. While some eggs move through the process and become food themselves, others are fertilized and create the all important animals who will create more. The particularly cute nature of chicks then paired with adorable children and you get this cuteness overload.

Two young girls holding chicks, Indianapolis, 1951 ; Boy watching chick hatch, Indianapolis, 1951. IHS, P0569

While eggs have a very practical place in many people’s diets, they are also used for all types of fun purposes. The commodity is popularly dyed or decorated for Easter. Eggs are used for pranks and games, such as the spoon race shown below. More recently, a trend on social media shows people tapping them on people’s foreheads to crack them for recipes (I don’t condone this surprise egg attack).

A young woman paints an egg for the Beta Sigma Psi Easter event, Indianapolis, 1942; In 1930, the annual Indiana Coal Miners’ picnic featured an egg and spoon race, Terre Haute. IHS, P0569 (cropped); Martin Collection, IHS (cropped).

I enjoy hard-boiled eggs regularly, though I’ve never been (to my knowledge) pictured chowing down on one like the gents pictured below after they’d spent time dying a big batch of hard-boiled eggs for Easter. I also cook with them by themselves and in other dishes regularly like the young man about to crack his egg for the recipe. However, I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed or attempted the recipes pictured below the men.

Enjoying boiled eggs after some hard work, Terre Haute, 1940; Boy working in the kitchen at Gibault Home, Terre Haute, 1940; Recipe for Celery Mustard Eggs from the Maennerchor cookbook, 1906; Recipe for Poached Eggs on Liver from the cookbook by the Gamma Psi chapter of Tri Kappa. Martin Collection, IHS (cropped); IHS (cropped).

There are other egg images in our digital collection, and likely many more within our collections not yet digitized. But for now, I’ll leave you to enjoy those posted above. Don’t forget to celebrate National Egg Month. For other great content, always remember to visit the IHS blog site.

Amy Vedra is the director of reference services. She is currently reading her way through the Great American Reads list.

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