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To Keep Eggs for Winter Use
Mrs. C. Patterson.
Take a pint of unslacked lime, and a pint of salt; put them into a pail of water; the eggs must be well covered with the mixture.
This is a limewater method for holding eggs through the months when hens stop laying. It cannot be reproduced safely in a modern kitchen, and the reasons are specific to this preparation rather than general squeamishness about old recipes.
- Unslacked lime is quicklime"Unslacked" (unslaked) lime is calcium oxide, a caustic industrial chemical that reacts violently with water, heating the pail and generating calcium hydroxide. Handling a pint of it by eye, with no protection for eyes or hands, is the first failure point before any egg goes in.
- The eggs are never cooked or heatedNothing in this method kills anything. The lime works by sealing the shell pores and raising the pH of the surface, which slows spoilage bacteria; it does nothing about Salmonella already inside an egg, and months at cellar temperature give any that is present time to multiply.
- Modern eggs are the wrong eggsCommercial eggs in North America are washed and sanitised, which strips the natural bloom (cuticle) from the shell. A lime seal of this kind assumed an unwashed, freshly gathered farm egg; a supermarket egg has already lost the barrier the method depends on.
- No quantities that mean anything"A pail of water" is an unspecified volume, so the strength of the solution is unknown. Preservation methods that rely on a specific pH or salt concentration cannot be run on an unspecified dilution.
- No storage temperature and no end pointThe recipe gives no cellar temperature, no maximum keeping time, and no test for whether an egg has gone bad on removal. "Winter use" could mean six weeks or six months, and the difference matters a great deal.
- If you want to store eggsFollow current food-safety guidance for refrigerated storage, or freeze beaten eggs. Use a modern source for anything involving long-term preservation of a low-acid animal food.
Water glass and limewater were the two standard household methods for putting down eggs, and both appear across nineteenth-century North American cookbooks; The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877), compiled from contributions by named local women, includes several competing versions. Hens lay on daylight, so eggs were abundant and cheap in spring and scarce and dear by January, and a farm or town kitchen that could carry two or three dozen through to midwinter was saving real money. Lime slaked in water yields calcium hydroxide, which coats the shell and plugs its pores, keeping air and bacteria out and moisture in; the salt was generally held to help, though its role is more doubtful. The practice receded as cold storage and year-round railway shipping made fresh eggs a winter commodity, though liming and water glass persisted well into the twentieth century.