Like the Nuns’ Eggs

There is always someone, in every small town, looking for them that way: perfect. They want them fresh, large, cheap… and, while we’re at it, with two yolks as well — just in case. And that’s when the saying comes out, not just a phrase but a small popular verdict: “like the nuns’ eggs.” No further explanation is needed, because everything is already there — the smile, the irony, and that gentle teasing aimed at those who expect too much, all at once.

In the mornings of the past, among wooden crates and hands still marked by the soil, eggs were never all the same, and they never could be. The good ones stood out immediately: heavier, with a shell that told a story, carrying within them the hen, the yard, the day before. And precisely for that reason, they had value. No one would have thought of asking for the very best at the lowest price, because the best — the real kind — required effort, time, and season. And yet, every now and then, someone would arrive with the air of someone trying to strike the deal of a lifetime. And that’s when the reply would come, sharp and exact: “well then… like the nuns’ eggs!”

Then there is another story, softer, almost whispered: brides who would bring a dozen fresh eggs to cloistered nuns, as one brings something good to those who guard silence and prayer. It was not just a gift, but a gesture full of meaning — fertility, abundance, a beginning. And from those eggs, simple yet precious, came sweets that even today seem suspended between earth and sky, like the Tette delle monache, so light they feel almost unreal, yet made with real ingredients, with no shortcuts.

And this is the point: the nuns’ eggs have never truly existed, at least not in the way we imagine them when we demand perfection in everything. They exist instead as an idea, as a missed measure, as a small warning disguised as a joke. Because the truth — the kind once learned without needing to be said aloud — is that you cannot have everything at once: quality, abundance, and low cost, without losing something along the way. And perhaps this is the deepest meaning of the saying: to remind us, gently, that life is not a marketplace where you can always take the best at the lowest price, but a balance made of choices, compromises, and, sometimes, the ability to say, “this is enough.”

Sources

Oral tradition of Turi and local dialect collections by Raffaele Valentini

Narrative adaptation: Miriam Valentini