[Sca-cooks] Eggs was Hi again everyone!!!

[Terry Decker]

"The best way to keep eggs is in bean meal or flour and during winter in 
chaff, but fior the summertime in bran."  Pliny, Natural Histories.

"The manner to keep eggs a long time is, in the winter in straw and in 
summer in bran or meal."  Columella

"Because egges of themselves are a singular profit, you shall understand 
that the best way to preserve or keepe them long is, as some thinke, to lay 
them in straw and cover them close; but that is too cold, and besides it 
will make them mustie.  Others lay them in branne, but that is too hot.  The 
best way to keepe them most sweet, most sound and most full, is only to 
keepe them in a heape of old malt, close and well covered all over." 
Gervase Markham, Cheape and Good Husbandrie, 1616.

Unless there is direct evidence to the contrary, sealing the pores of the 
egg to prevent transpiration may be attributed to Rene Antoine Ferchault de 
Reaumur (1683-1757).  Among his many scientific investigations, he studied 
how eggs went bad and determined that transpiration through the shell was 
the primary cause.  He determined that keeping eggs in a cool cellar, or 
better, an ice house, reduced transpiration.  He first experimented with 
sealing the egg in a varnish made of spirits of wine, then switched to fats 
as a more practical means of sealing eggs.  He developed a mixture of mutton 
and beef suet that that was effective and more practical for rural farmers 
engaged in commercial production..  He also determined that unfertilized 
eggs could be preserved longer than fertile ones.

Bear