Home › Recipes › About Eggs and Egg Beating

About Eggs and Egg Beating

One of the very first cook-books I ever picked up cautioned the reader not to stop beating the eggs that were once commenced, because they would go down "and no human power can whip them up light again." The statement is altogether erroneous and a very mischievous one for the class of learners who are always seeking excuses for bad work. And it went on to say, "and sometimes they cannot be whipped to perfect lightness at all. In that case you should procure some fresher eggs," etc.

Hotel work admits of no apologies, and when the steward and cooks plan the dinner they cannot afford to make the appearance of a dish contingent upon the caprice of a dozen of eggs, whether they will choose to come up light or not. The ease or difficulty of beating up eggs, meringue, icing, sponge cake and the rest depends upon the degree of density or viscidity of the eggs or the white of eggs, and that often depends upon the temperature; they are thicker when cold, and when warm the white of eggs sometimes becomes so thin as to have no more power to hold the air bubbles beaten into it than so much water. Only last winter a man who had worked with me was boarding at a small hotel and happened in the bar room when some men who couldn't were trying to beat up the eggs for the Christmas egg nogg. They had the eggs in a tin pail and sat by the stove taking spells with each other and beating for all that was out, without the least sign of success. As soon as the man saw what was the matter he took the pail, went outside and set it on the snow, and in ten minutes had succeeded in converting the eggs into a pailful of foam, and the men who couldn't allowed that it was a little trick worth knowing. Sometimes the eggs can be beaten up quite as easily when warm, but that is when they have lost part of the water they contain by evaporation, as even eggs in the shell will do in dry weather and thus become as thick as if made cold.