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Eggs, Pickled
Remove the shells from three or four dozen hard-boiled eggs; do not break them, but arrange them carefully in large-mouthed jars. Boil one pint of vinegar, with allspice, ginger, and a couple of cloves of garlic. When the flavour of the spice is extracted, add another pint of vinegar, bring it to a boil, and pour scalding hot over the eggs. When cold, seal up the jars for a month. This will be found a cheap pickle when eggs are plentiful, and for its piquancy is much liked.
This is a shelf-stable pickle made from low-acid food, and it is one of the few genuinely dangerous procedures in the book. The points below explain the failure rather than correcting it.
- The core problem: botulismWhole hard-boiled eggs sealed in a jar and left at room temperature for a month create exactly the conditions Clostridium botulinum needs — no oxygen, low acid at the centre of the egg, and warmth. Pickled eggs held at ambient temperature have been documented as a cause of botulism poisoning; the toxin gives no smell, taste or visible sign.
- Acid cannot reach the yolkA cooked egg is a dense solid. Vinegar poured over unpricked, unbroken eggs penetrates the white slowly and may never bring the yolk down to a safe pH within the storage period, however sharp the brine tastes. Modern tested procedures rely on measured acidity throughout the food, not on surface contact.
- Not enough liquidTwo pints of vinegar may not submerge three or four dozen eggs packed into large-mouthed jars, and at the upper end of that range it almost certainly will not. Any eggs standing above the brine line are simply unrefrigerated cooked eggs in a sealed container.
- "Seal up the jars" is not canningThe original means covering and setting aside, with no processing step and no temperature given. Pouring scalding vinegar over the eggs pasteurises nothing at the centre and does not sterilise the jar contents.
- Garlic makes it worse, not betterGarlic makes it no safer -- Garlic cloves carry soil organisms including botulinum spores, and here they are boiled briefly in the vinegar, which will not destroy spores. Garlic held in low-acid liquid at room temperature is itself a recognised hazard, and this pack is intended to sit for a month.
- If you want pickled eggsUse a current tested recipe from a food-safety authority, with a specified acid strength and refrigerated storage. Do not adapt the timings or quantities above.
Pickled eggs belong to the same thrifty impulse as pickled walnuts and pickled samphire: a way of catching a glut. Hens in the nineteenth century laid seasonally, with a spring and early-summer flush that dropped off sharply in winter, so eggs swung from cheap to dear over the year — hence the note that this is "a cheap pickle when eggs are plentiful." Households preserved the surplus in several ways, including sealing the shells with waterglass or lime, and pickling in spiced vinegar had the advantage of producing something to eat with cold meat or bread and cheese rather than merely a keeping egg. The recipe survives today chiefly as a pub jar on the counter.