Skip to main content
Preserve

To Preserve Eggs

A method for preserving eggs by curing them in a quick-lime and coarse sea salt solution.

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

Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Preserve Eggs

up to 200 eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lime liquor

  1. In a large vessel, combine quick-lime and coarse sea salt.

  2. Slake the mixture with 1 gallon of boiling water until thick as cream.

  3. Once cool, pour off the clear liquid.

Preserve the eggs

  1. Drain the liquid and pour it over the eggs, ensuring they are fully covered.

  2. Use a stone jar that holds about six quarts for best results.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Lime + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quick-lime
Reacts with water to form an alkaline liquid that gradually sets the egg and preserves it.
Coarse sea salt
Helps preserve the eggs and aids penetration of the alkaline liquid into the shell.
Eggs
The main food being preserved; the alkaline liquid slowly transforms the white and yolk.

The step that matters

Slaking the quick-lime with boiling water. Quick-lime reacts vigorously with water and gives off heat, so adding the water slowly and stirring keeps the mixture even. Getting the thick, creamy consistency right ensures the solution is strong enough to preserve the eggs evenly.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg):

  1. Orangefits about as well
  2. Limethe original
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes