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Preserve

For Preserving Eggs

A method for preserving fresh eggs using boiling, cooling, drying, and packing in dry material.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

For Preserving Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Examine the eggs for cracks and breaks.

  2. Warm the eggs in water at 95°F (35°C) for 15 minutes.

  3. Wipe the eggs with a cloth soaked in warm water to remove dirt.

Dip and dry

  1. Place the eggs in a net or loosely-woven basket and dip in boiling water for 5 seconds.

  2. Quickly transfer the eggs to cold water.

  3. Lay the wet eggs on a linen cloth to air dry completely.

Pack and store

  1. Once dry, pack the eggs in a box with dry packing material.

  2. Ensure your hands are clean before handling the eggs.

  3. Store the boxes in a cool, dry place, away from frost.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + wheattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh eggs
The whole egg is the food being preserved, so it must be sound and clean before packing.
Boiling water
A brief dip heats the shell surface to help prepare the egg for preserving.
Packing material
Dry packing material surrounds the eggs in storage and keeps them dry and separated.

The step that matters

Dipping in boiling water for 5 seconds. The dip is very short so it warms the shell without cooking the egg inside. Longer exposure to boiling water would heat the contents and could spoil the egg for preserving.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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