Why it works: Egg and lime 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 ↓
Keeping Eggs Fresh
Ingredients
Directions
Pack the vessel
Place 2 to 3 inches of plaster at the bottom of the vessel.
Stand the fresh eggs upright, small end down, close together but not crowded.
Add more plaster to support the eggs and create additional layers until the vessel is full.
Cover the top layer of eggs with plaster.
Preserve in lime water
For long-term storage, mix 1 pint of unslacked lime and 1 pint of coarse salt in a pail of water.
Store the eggs in this lime water as soon as they are laid, and refresh the mixture every few months.
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.
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Egg + limetop 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
- Fresh eggs
- The food being preserved; unbroken yolks and shells are needed for the eggs to keep.
- Unslacked lime
- Makes the water strongly alkaline, which helps slow spoilage of the eggs.
- Fine-ground land plaster
- Packs around the eggs, supporting them and keeping them separated in the vessel.
The step that matters
Store the eggs in lime water as soon as they are laid. Eggs begin losing quality and becoming vulnerable to spoilage soon after laying, so delay reduces how well the preservation works. Keeping the mixture fresh over time also matters, since the lime water's strength changes as it is used.
“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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