Why it works: Lime and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 34% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,658 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
To Keep Eggs in Lime Water
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Pour 2 gallons of hot water over 1 pint of unslaked lime and ½ pint of coarse sea salt. Let the mixture cool.
Preserve the eggs
Place perfectly fresh eggs in a stone jar.
Once the mixture is cool, pour it over the eggs.
Store the jar in a cellar, ensuring there are no cracked eggs.
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.
-
Lime + eggtop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,658 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Unslacked lime
- Makes the water strongly alkaline, which slowly preserves the eggs.
- Coarse sea salt
- Adds salinity to the brine, helping preserve the eggs and season them.
- Perfectly fresh eggs
- Fresh eggs with intact shells are needed so the brine can preserve them safely.
The step that matters
Store the jar in a cellar, ensuring there are no cracked eggs.. Cracks let the alkaline brine penetrate the shell unevenly and allow spoilage bacteria to enter, so only whole, intact eggs should be submerged.
“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.
You might also like
Green Corn Pudding64 recipes
Cornmeal mush12 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.