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 ↓
Fo Preserve Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
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.
Do not add eggs on the same day the mixture is prepared.
Preserve the eggs
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 is what preserves the eggs over time.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out and seasons the eggs while helping preserve them.
- Cream of tartar
- Adds acidity that helps balance the strongly alkaline mixture.
The step that matters
Waiting before adding eggs. The mixture must be prepared a day ahead so the lime fully dissolves and the alkalinity settles. Adding eggs the same day risks an unevenly preserved result.
“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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