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Albumen Water
1 egg white 1/2 cup cold water A few grains salt Beat the egg white till foamy. Add the water, and beat the water and white together. Strain through cheesecloth. Add a few grains of salt. A little lemon juice may be added if desired.
This is a sickroom preparation rather than a dish: raw egg white thinned with water, made to give protein and fluid to patients who could keep nothing else down. It cannot be recommended today, and the points below explain why.
- The egg is never cookedNothing in the method brings the white above room temperature. Raw or lightly beaten egg white carries a real risk of Salmonella, which can be present inside an intact, clean-looking shell and is not removed by straining through cheesecloth.
- Written for exactly the wrong drinkerAlbumen water was fed to infants, the elderly, post-operative patients and people already weakened by fever or diarrhoea. Those are the groups in whom salmonellosis is most likely to become invasive and dangerous, so the intended use compounds the hazard rather than excusing it.
- Straining is not a safety stepThe cheesecloth removes the chalazae and the stringy portions of the white so the liquid pours smoothly. It has no effect on bacteria, and the same is true of the salt and the optional lemon juice, which are present for palatability alone.
- Standing at room temperatureThe recipe gives no instruction to chill or to serve at once. A protein-rich liquid held warm in a sickroom for the hours that a patient sips it is a good growth medium.
- Raw white and biotinUncooked egg white contains avidin, which binds dietary biotin and blocks its absorption. This matters little in a single glass, and would only become a concern with repeated feeding over a long period.
- If you need the original purposeRehydration and easily absorbed nutrition for a sick person are now handled by oral rehydration solutions and clinical formulas. Follow current medical advice rather than adapting this.
Albumen water belongs to the large body of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "invalid cookery" -- beef tea, barley water, whey, arrowroot gruel, rice water -- assembled on the theory that a failing digestion needed food reduced to its simplest and most liquid form. Egg white was prized because it was understood to be nearly pure protein, cheap, available in any household with hens, and bland enough for a patient who gagged at milk. Nurse-training manuals and domestic science texts of the period printed these preparations alongside ordinary family recipes because feeding the sick was assumed to be the housekeeper's job rather than a hospital's. The unremarked use of raw egg reflects a time before the risk of egg-borne Salmonella infection was widely recognised.