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Preserve

To Preserve Eggs

A method for preserving eggs using quick lime, sea salt, cream of tartar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

To Preserve Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a tub or vessel, mix quick lime, coarse sea salt, and cream of tartar.

  2. Add enough water to create a mixture that can float an egg.

  3. Store the mixture in a cool place for preserving eggs.

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. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Lime + creamtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together740 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Raises the alkalinity of the mixture, which helps preserve the eggs.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture and helps preserve the eggs in the brine.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps balance the strongly alkaline mixture.

The step that matters

Adding water to a float-egg strength. Enough water must be added to make a mixture that can float an egg, so the solution is dense and concentrated enough to preserve the eggs. Too little water leaves the mix too dry to coat the eggs evenly.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

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