Ambulant vendors carrying baskets lined with layers of cloth to keep the eggs hot used to ply the streets while calling out “Baluuuttt, penooooyyy…” I rarely see these sellers these days.
What is balut? What is penoy?
Balut is hardboiled duck egg with a partially developed 16- to 18-day old duck embryo inside.
You can see the partially developed duck embryo covered in egg white in the balut photo (left). I cracked the shell before taking the photo to be able to identify the parts. The veins are visible from the interior of the shell. The yolk is divided by the white which contains the embryo. The round part at the bottom is what we call bato (literally, stone), a hard white inedible part of the balut.
What is penoy?
Penoy is an infertile incubated duck egg or with dead embryo.
This penoy is what we used to call penoy na may sabaw (literally, soupy penoy) when we were kids because, unlike ordinary harboiled eggs, this kind of penoy is more like custard. In some instances, such as the one in the photo, the center has the consistency of the yolk of a hard-boiled egg while around it is the custard-like part. According to the young vendor, it is (now) called higupin, literally, for sipping.