My Austrian neighbor, a psychiatrist, came back from her vacation in Vienna with a half-carton of eggs in her luggage and a look of relief on her face.

"Finally, I can have an omelet again," she told me. "I stopped eating them over here. I never had one I liked."

She didn't blame the cooks, although omelets are without question prepared more ineptly than any other item in an American restaurant. She blamed our eggs. I was curious why she had such strong feelings about eggs, but I decided not to probe. With her training, she should be able to figure that out for herself.

She doesn't eat American eggs. At first I thought it was more European elitism. I made fun of her pretentiousness. For once I would have been pleased to see the baggage handlers at JFK airport heave her suitcase around the way they always do mine.

Her eggs, however, came through the passage in perfect condition. Those Europeans do know how to pack.

"Here, take one," she said, relinquishing one of her precious brood of six. "Cook it. Tell me what you think."

Her egg came from Toni's Freilandeier, an acclaimed major Austrian egg producer. It was brown, the product of organic, free-range hens fed vegetarian food. I decided to put her egg up against one from Eggland's Best, an acclaimed major American egg producer. It was white, the product of vegetarian food. Not organic. Not free-range. The cost of the eggs wasn't much different—hers were slightly more expensive, which could have been attributable to the difference between the dollar and the euro.

I cracked both, carefully placing each one in a separate bowl. I had to be careful. I had one chance. I felt like an Iron Chef.

The yolk of the Eggland's Best was pale yellow. The yolk of the Toni's Freilandeier was true orange.

I fried each one, sunnyside-up, in a judicious quantity of butter. (Perhaps I should have poached them for a purer taste, but I'm not much of a cook and this was the best I could do.)

I did a fine job under pressure. The whites were slightly crisp, the yolks just warm enough.

The color of the Austrian yolk deepened with cooking. The American yolk looked about the same, nice and bright yellow—that's why we call them sunnyside-up. In Austria, by the way, they are called spiegelei, mirror egg.

The flavor of the two eggs wasn't appreciably different. Both were eggy. The mouth-feel of the yolks was enormously different. The orange Austrian egg was creamier and richer. It had a longer, smoother finish.

Sadly, she had turned out to be right.

"What do you do different to your eggs?" I asked her.

"I don't know."

"Why do they call them spiegelei?" I wondered.

"I don't know."

I told her I was disappointed because psychiatrists from Vienna were supposed to know everything.

"Listen," she said. "I always have the urge to ask questions. I'm a psychiatrist. But with spiegelei, I don't ask."

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