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 Preserve Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lime solution
Pour 1 gallon of water over 1 pound of unslaked lime and stir well.
The following day, pour off the clear water into a jar.
Preserve the eggs
Add the eggs as they are laid into the jar.
This method will keep the eggs good for six months or more.
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 + 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
- Unslaked lime
- Creates a strongly alkaline solution that slowly preserves the eggs by changing their contents.
- Eggs
- The food being preserved; they are transformed slowly by the alkaline liquid over time.
The step that matters
Pour off only the clear water. The clear liquid is the alkaline solution that preserves the eggs. Settled lime solids left in the bottom should stay behind, so the liquid poured into the jar is clear and not cloudy with sediment.
“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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