[Sca-cooks] Eggs was Hi again everyone!!!
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at att.net
Fri Apr 3 16:36:57 PDT 2009
"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
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