James Bond and Eggs

Learn how to cook scrambled eggs with James Bond

“James bond eats a lot of eggs,” apparently.

“He eats them in every one of Ian Fleming’s twelve Bond novels. He eats eggs scrambled, fried, boiled, shirred [baked], and en cocotte, as well as in omelettes, soufflés, and béarnaise sauce, and in a hang over cure known as a ‘prairie oyster.’” That’s according to a journal article entitled, “James Bond and the Art of Eating Eggs.”

In one of the stories, “007 in New York,” James Bond even provides his own favourite recipe for scrambled eggs, for four people. Here it is.

12 fresh eggs

Salt and pepper

5–6 oz. of fresh butter

Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy bottomed saucepan) melt four oz. of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.

While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove the pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fines herbes. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink champagne (Taittinger) and low music.

It’s universally agreed Bond’s love of eggs derives from the author’s own. Fleming was a famous ovophile, and consumed scrambled eggs pretty much every day. He told a friend scrambled eggs and coffee were the “only things in life that never let you down.” Fleming was forced to give up eggs at the end of his life by his doctor, after his health began to fail—another victim of the absurd war on cholesterol. Bond, however, continued eating eggs until the very last novel.

As far as I’m aware, James Bond has never eaten an egg in any of the films—and I’ve seen them all, apart from the latest one, where he’s replaced as 007 by a black woman. I’d love to see a reboot set in the 1950s, with Bond guzzling every kind of egg cooked and raw he can get his hands on.