[Sca-cooks] egg storage

[Stefan li Rous]

Celia said:
<<< I don't believe it preserves them for very long, but I have an  
Irish cookbook that has a recipe for "buttered eggs", which the
author says keeps them fresh for a while.   Essentially you just take  
the eggs as soon as they're laid, and still warm, and then
slaver butter all over them, which places a barrier around the porous  
shell, keeping air out, as I understand it.  And that's
supposed to keep them fresh longer.>>>

The original question seemed to imply only keeping the eggs through  
the end of Lent/Easter. For that you only need to keep the eggs cool,  
preferably with the air kept out of the porous shell. Either by  
leaving on the film that they come out of the chicken coated with, or  
by using Vaseline, wax or some other compound. Isinglass is one of  
the items mentioned, although I don't have any info on how far back  
that goes.

You really don't need to hard boil them or pickle or otherwise  
preserve them unless you are keeping them for much longer. I suspect  
by the time Lent rolled around folks had had enough of pickled,  
salted and preserved foods and would have avoided doing that to any  
fresh eggs if they could.

In this file in the FOOD section of the Florilegium you can find  
first-hand and documentary proof of keeping eggs longer than the 40?  
days of Lent.
egg-storage-msg   (17K)  9/10/04    Period and modern raw egg storage.

<<< Of course, I have no idea from this recipe book *when* they might  
have started doing that, but it may be a lead someone would like to  
follow up on to document :) >>>

Unfortunately, none of the info I have is proof of what techniques  
were used in the Middle Ages. Much of the documentation in this file  
comes from the 19th and early 20th century and some personal anecdotes.

Even the eggs that you buy in the store may not be as fresh as you  
think they are. They can spend quite a lot of time in shipment and  
distribution. I think the info I have on that is in the eggs-msg file  
mentioned earlier.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****