I am really enjoying studying J. Kenji Lopez Alt book "The Food Lab" on eggs. I had not really given much thought about cooking eggs! Kenji has a really good section on eggs!
Both my mother and grandmother were commercial egg producers in the 1950 and 1960s. So I ate a lot of chicken and eggs growing up.
In one section of Kenji's musing he notes he had never seen eggs fried in excess fat in a skillet until making a trip to Spain. I had really thought that was the only way to fry eggs unless going to a diner that were fried on a flat top cast iron griddle. Also, sunny side up was a totally different meaning to me until looking at his pictures in the book. To me, sunny side up was a very runny yolk. In a cast skillet with excess fat, the process would be to take the spatula and flip hot fat onto the surface of the egg without flipping the egg but created a white color on top of the egg. Learned something there!
In another section, Kenji muses about peeling eggs for hard boiled eggs and the shell sticking to the egg white for the best method. I do agree with all his comments except one, piecing the egg on the large end. Piecing on the large end does not in fact aid in peeling as Kenji states correctly but is used to fill the egg shell with egg white. On an old egg, the big end of the egg fills with hydrogen sulfide gas which if boiled, a flat end on the hard boiled egg will form when the egg white sets. The egg shell cannot release the hydrogen sulfide fast enough before the egg white sets if not pieced. The yolk of the egg never centers in the egg white because of age but when boiling but the white of the egg looks nice.
Mom always floated her eggs from excess storage due to the fact of not being able to fill a case of fresh eggs for shipment. I got the great task, as a kid, of taking the floaters outdoors to throw like grenades and watching them explode when hitting the ground!
Also notice that in an egg carton that the large end points to the top of the carton. When I pierce old eggs, they are done in the carton before boiling.