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Preserving Eggs a Year

A method of preserving eggs by soaking them in a salt and lime solution for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Preserving Eggs a Year

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Dissolve the salt and lime in boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture settle.

Preserve the eggs

  1. Place the eggs in stone jars and cover them completely with the liquid. Ensure the jars are made of stone, not soft crockery.

  2. Store the jars in a cool place; the eggs will keep for twelve months.

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. Lime + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Eggs
The main food being preserved; the whites set into a firm gel as they cure.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and inhibits spoilage microbes, helping the eggs keep.
Lime
Makes the liquid alkaline, which helps preserve the eggs and firms the whites.

The step that matters

Cover the eggs completely with the liquid. Any part of an egg left exposed to air can spoil, and the preserving effect depends on the brine covering every egg fully.

“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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