Costco Is Now Selling Preserved ‘Century’ Eggs

Warehouse giant Costco is known for stocking a variety of unusual items, from $10,000 bottles of French wine to caskets. Their latest addition, preserved duck eggs, is an acquired taste.

According to Tasting Table, the retailer is now offering cases of “century eggs,” a delicacy that originated in China. Duck, quail, or chicken eggs are selected fresh and then placed into a preservative mixture—often salt, clay, lime, black tea, and ash—and are left to soak for weeks to months. The solution acts as a kind of egg embalming fluid, making them shelf-stable. (It also turns the eggs from white to dark brown or green.)

When you’re ready to consume the egg, you can eat it by itself or sliced up in a variety of dishes. One popular option is to prepare it with congee, a.k.a. rice porridge. Food reviewer and YouTuber The Sushi Guy tried it both ways in a video, which you can watch below.

The Sushi Guy was seemingly the first to announce the product, posting on Reddit that he sourced them at a San Jose, California, Costco, where they were priced at $13.99 for 20. He described the egg whites as “jello-like” and reported that the eggs give off a “strong smell of ammonia.”

The exact origin of the century egg, known in Mandarin as pídàn, is unclear. One (likely apocryphal) story has a Chinese farmer discovering duck eggs in a mud puddle that also contained lime. Another involves ducks laying eggs in the discarded tea leaves and ashes of a stove.

However, it was first discovered that the process likely dates to the Ming Dynasty. Once confined to rural areas, the dish began to spread to Hong Kong in the 1940s. They’re commonly eaten as a snack or appetizer in China today.

“Sometimes we have foreign travelers who look at [the egg] and get a little scared because it looks dark, ugly, and all gooey and green,” restauranteur Carrel Kam told the BBC in 2022. “But it’s psychological—just like the idea of blue cheese. The smell is terrible but the taste is good.”

Century egg enthusiasts assert the eggs usually pair well with wine. Perhaps one of the $10,000 Costco bottles would do.

Read More About Costco: