ROUSES_SeptOct2019_Magazine

THE EGG BOWL by SARAH BAIRD, photo by romney caruso

The concept of a “golden egg” as a highly covetable item has played a surprisingly outsized role in our pop culture history for centuries. There’s the classic children’s tale about the goose who laid golden eggs: an Aesop’s Fable which teaches that being greedy can lead to the destruction of something beneficial. There’s the bratty, spoiled antihero of Roald Dahl’s beloved book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , who is sent down the trash chute after insisting — via a humdinger of a temper tantrum — that she be given one of Willy Wonka’s golden-egg-laying geese. A nd then, in Mississippi, there’s the Golden Egg trophy. Each year on or around Thanksgiving, the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State meet in an intrastate football clash that’s come to be known as the Battle for the Golden Egg — or the Egg Bowl, for short. The term was coined by The Clarion-Ledger in 1977, when the headline, “Egg Bowl Is Up for Scramble” helped to elevate the annual game into a high-stakes showdown. The following year, Clarion-Ledger journalist Steven Doyle wrote of the contest: “In a year in which neither team will be remembered, the Battle of the Golden Egg is a bowl game. Intense, heated, unbelievable in its lore, this one is for supremacy of the season. Bragging rights, recruiting edges and sheer pride are the guts of it. Every

Bloody Mary Deviled Eggs (Makes 12 eggs)

HOW TO PREP: Slice eggs in half lengthwise. Remove yolks and place in small bowl. Mash yolks with fork or potato masher. Stir in mayonnaise, tomato juice, horseradish, paprika and sea salt until smooth and creamy. To rim eggs, place additional paprika on small plate. Dip cut sides of egg-white halves into paprika to coat. Spoon or pipe yolk mixture into egg-white halves. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until ready to serve. Top each with a celery leaf. glory at the respective victor’s school until the following year’s matchup. Over the past 115 years, there have been plenty of chances for bragging rights (and plenty of brawls) on both sides. Mississippi State has had the most wins overall, and posted the largest win in the rivalry’s history, demolishing Ole Miss with a 65-0 victory in 1915. Ole Miss, though, has the longest unbeaten streak of the two teams, having not lost a single Egg Bowl game for 18 straight years, from 1947 to1963. But whichever team finds the Golden Egg in their clutches at the end of the season, the annual game is a testament to the idea that the best rivalries are — more often than not — homegrown.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled 2 tablespoons mayonnaise 2 tablespoons tomato juice 2 teaspoons prepared horseradish 1 teaspoon paprika ¼ teaspoon salt 12 small celery leaves

cliché you’ve ever heard about a single game applies to it.” But by the time the Egg Bowl found its name, Oxford and Starkville’s gridiron finest had already met dozens of times on the field. The first matchup between Ole Miss and Mississippi State (which was, at the time, called Mississippi A&M) was in 1901, when Mississippi State won handily, 35-3. In 1927, the Golden Egg trophy — a hulking, football-shaped brass piece mounted to a wooden base — was introduced, and now, each year, it lives in

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SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2019