Why it works: Lime and cream work together. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 740 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
To Preserve Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Make the preserving mixture
In a deep pan, combine quick lime, coarse sea salt, and cream of tartar.
Add enough water to create a mixture that allows an egg to float with the top just above the liquid.
Preserve the eggs
Do not add eggs on the same day the mixture is made.
Place fresh eggs in the mixture to preserve them for up to a year.
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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Lime + creamtop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together740 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Quick lime
- Raises the alkalinity of the liquid, which helps set the egg white and seal the shell.
- Coarse sea salt
- Adds salinity that helps draw water out of the egg and aids preservation.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds mild acidity that helps moderate the strong alkalinity of the mixture.
The step that matters
Waiting a day before adding eggs. Freshly mixed quick lime is still very reactive and its alkalinity is at its strongest. Letting the mixture settle before adding eggs lets the chemistry stabilise, so the eggs are not exposed to a harsher, less predictable liquid.
“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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