Foul ma' Bayd (فول مع بيض) is Lebanese fava beans served with egg: the warm garlicky ful medames base joined by egg, either folded through soft-scrambled, sliced on top boiled, or fried and set over the beans, and eaten by scooping with bread or packed into it. Foul is the standard Levantine breakfast of small dark favas simmered soft and crushed with lemon, garlic, and oil; adding egg turns a side of beans into a fuller plate. The angle is richness and how the egg is cooked into the picture. The beans are earthy and a little austere on their own, and egg brings fat, softness, and a savory roundness that fills them out, but only if the egg is cooked with some care; an overcooked rubbery egg adds nothing, and a raw underset one turns the bowl slick.
The build is foul first, egg second. Small fava beans, soaked and simmered until fully soft, are crushed warm with crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt, and olive oil and held loose. The egg goes in by one of a few standard routes. The most common is to scramble eggs softly and either fold them through the warm beans so the bowl turns rich and creamy, or pile them on one side as a distinct soft mound. Other kitchens top the beans with halved boiled eggs for a firmer, cleaner contrast, or slide a fried egg with a runny yolk over the mash so the yolk breaks down into it as a sauce. Whichever route, the finish is standard: olive oil, cumin, parsley, often diced tomato and onion, with torn khubz for scooping or a pita for a hand-held version. Good execution shows soft well-seasoned beans underneath, egg that is tender, scramble still glossy and just set, boiled egg with a creamy not chalky yolk, fried egg with the white firm and the yolk liquid, and a result where the egg enriches the fava rather than smothering it. Sloppy execution is chalky undercooked beans, eggs scrambled hard and dry into rubbery curds, or a fried egg cooked until the yolk is solid so there is no sauce to gain.
It varies almost entirely by how the egg is handled, since the bean base is the same as the plain olive-oil version underneath. Folded scramble makes the whole bowl uniform and rich; eggs left whole on top, boiled or fried, keep the bean and egg as separate textures you combine bite by bite. The garlic and lemon level in the foul is the other lever, often pushed a little harder here so it cuts the added fat of the egg. This egg form sits beside the olive-oil, yogurt, and hummus builds of foul as its own named version rather than a variant note on them, and each deserves its own treatment. What foul ma' bayd reliably delivers is the everyday fava base made into a fuller plate by egg: earthy beans, garlic and lemon, and soft savory egg, eaten warm with bread.