over-egging

The Monthly piece by Paddy Manning was headed Avid on CoVid with a subheading The Pm risks over-egging the response to coronavirus.  I love the verb to over-egg. It is not a word that has high frequency these days. In British English it began life as the phrase to over-egg the pudding.  Early citations are in northern dialects of British English with the implication that the pudding in question was perhaps a Yorkshire pudding where it is a mistake to be mean with the amount of egg that you put in the batter.  Equally you can be too generous with the eggs and the pudding will come out of the oven with a rather rubbery texture.  The phrase quickly took on a figurative meaning of ‘to exaggerate or go too far in making a claim or embellishing a remark’.