Monday, April 06, 2009

Preserving eggs, otherwayes.

There are numerous ways of preserving eggs, each with its own limitations. Last week we looked at pickled eggs - popular since the sixteenth century, but only useful to be eaten out of the jar as a snack, and also dried egg powder - a twentieth century WW II star which proved useful in baking and barely acceptable if you were desperate for an omelette or scrambled eggs. Nowadays we have cold storage which enables us to have “fresh” eggs until the use-by date on the carton. If we are so inclined we can even freeze surplus egg ‘pulp’ (what is the word for egg innards?) for use in cooking - yolks and whites separately, if we wish, in case of urgent custard or meringue situations.

Our ancestors didn’t waste anything. So, how did the careful farmers’s wife or housewife cope with an egg glut before technological advances enabled spray-drying and refrigeration? There were a number of methods, now thoroughly outdated but interesting because they were used on whole, unshelled eggs, enabling them to be kept 6-9 months. The methods were all based on the simple principles of keeping bacteria and air out of the egg.

The commonest methods were by immersion in lime water – a more popular method for large scale preserving but having the disadvantage of giving a ‘limey’ flavour, or alternatively by immersion in ‘water glass’ (sodium silicate) – a common household method that kept the yolk ‘central’ in the egg. Other methods were burying them in salt, dipping them in sulphuric acid (which converted the lime in the shell to lime sulphate), boiling them briefy in boric acid, ‘putting them up’ in oil, or coating the shell with glycerine, petroleum jelly (Vaseline), wax, varnish, or one of a number of proprietary products.

An article in The Times of June 8, 1914 discussed the various methods of egg preservation, noted that preserved eggs should never be passed off as fresh, and advised its readers how to pick the subterfuge. Preserved eggs could be known by the ‘roughness of the shell, if limed, by the yolk losing its firm roundness, by the thin and watery albumen, or white, and by the odour, which is unmistakeable.’

Here’s how to apply the two most common methods, from Henley’s Twentieth Century Book of Recipes, Formulas, and Processes (1916)


Preserving with Lime.
Dissolve in each gallon of water 12 ounces of quicklime, 6 ounces of common salt, 1 drachm of soda, 0.5 drachm saltpeter, 0.5 drachm tartar, and 1.5 drachms of borax. The fluid is brought into a barrel and sufficient quicklime to cover the bottom is then poured in. Upon this is placed a layer of eggs, quicklime is again thrown in and so on until the barrel is filled so that the liquor stands about 10 inches deep over the last layer of eggs. The barrel is then covered with a cloth, upon which is scattered some lime.

Preserving in Sodium Silicate.
Dissolve sodium silicate in boiling water, to about the consistency of a syrup (or about 1 part of the silicate to 3 parts water). The eggs should be as fresh as possible, and must be thoroughly clean. They should be immersed in the solution in such manner that every part of each egg is covered with the liquid, then removed and let dry. If the solution is kept at or near the boiling temperature, the preservative effect is said to be much more certain and to last longer.


Quotation for the Day.

By the immediate preservation of eggs for home consumption through the use of water glass or lime water, larger supplies of fresh eggs may be made available for marketing later in the season, when production is less and prices higher.
David F. Houston

12 comments:

  1. RE: "Our ancestors didn’t waste anything."

    How about the egg shells?

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  2. Egg shells were fed back to the chickens (my father in law swore by this method of giving them back the calcium), used to refine (?) coffee and wine. There are others too, but I cant remember them off the top of my head (which seems to be having more of a problem that way as the years wear on ...)

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  3. When preserving eggs in water glass solution, do the eggs stay in the solution until wanted, or can you remove them and keep them in a kilner jar?

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  4. Well my husband and I are into our 60's and we are still learning ...While watching an old favorite program, "Matt Dillion",we heard Miss Kitty refer to getting eggs at Delmonico's that weren't "water glass". Interesting method of preserving eggs.
    And for those who don't know, before the show was called "Gumsmoke" it was called simply "Matt Dillion".

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  5. my mother said when she was younger in italy, she would go into the back room and pull an egg or 2 out of a bucket with liquid. apparently they remained in the liquid till used.... any idea what this might have been?

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  6. Hi Anonymous: most likely it would be 'waterglass', I guess.

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  7. Hi Anonymous, my mother mentioned just last night that as a girl she had to fetch eggs from the barrel of lime water that was kept in the store room just off the front veranda - this was in Franchhoek (in the Western Cape, South Africa) in the 50s. She said getting the last eggs out of the bucket was always risky and not something she looked forward to, because she had to put her hand deep into the lime sediment at the bottom and there was a chance eggs that had got stuck to the sediment would break in her hand.
    She did not mention a distinctive smell as mentioned here. I'll as her if she remembers what it was like the next time I see her.

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  8. I bet retrieving the eggs was the job given to the little kids for that very reason!

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  9. how does limewater preserve the eggs?

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  10. Hi Anonymous - I dont exactly know but will try to find out. The liquid would exclude the air, and the alkalinity must have been important. I have totally forgotten any chemistry I ever knew!

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  11. The lime altered the ph of the water so bacteria wouldn't grow and the water sealed the egg away from oxygen. Gram used this all the time. You can also salt the eggs in a pail or barrel and the brine will keep the eggs. same process as lime, but the eggs tasted different than the lime process.

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  12. I would strongly advise against trying to keep eggs in extended storage at home, no matter what kind of miracle method you're using! At least, not in its raw form in any case!

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