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 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.
Make the 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.
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
- Fine-ground land plaster
- Surrounds each egg with a dry, supportive bed that keeps them separated and steady.
- Unslacked lime
- Makes the storage liquid alkaline, which helps preserve the eggs over long periods.
- Coarse salt
- Adds salinity to the lime water, adding to its preserving effect.
The step that matters
Store the eggs in lime water as soon as they are laid. Eggs start losing freshness as soon as they are laid, and the shell is porous, so air and microbes can enter. Putting them into the alkaline solution quickly limits this change, so delay reduces the preserving effect.
“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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