A 240-Year-Old Recipe for Pickling Eggs

Hi I'm Jon Townsend and today we'll be making  authentic eighteenth-century pickled eggs thanks   for joining us today on 18th century cooking.  So awhile back we did a short series on food   preservation and this really goes right along  with that. Pickled eggs are a great way to   preserve your eggs for the future it's important  to remember that food preservation techniques   like this well if you do them improperly it can  be bad for you you can be poisoned by it so I   really recommend storing these in the refrigerator  when you're done with them. Pickling eggs is quite   easy this recipe comes from Charlotte Masons 1778  cookbook "The Lady's Assistant" I'm starting with   a dozen eggs. There are different ways to hard  boil eggs and for store-bought eggs like these   eggs the best way to get them hard-boiled properly  I guess would be to put these into cold water and   allow that water to come up to boiling as soon  as it comes up to boiling you take that pan off   you cover it and leave it for 13 minutes. Fresh  eggs on the other hand it can be very difficult   to peel once they're boiled so probably the  best way to boil these would be to get your   water boiling first then put the eggs down into  your boiling water let it return to a boil and   boil them for 15 minutes. So regardless of how  you boil your eggs once they're done boiling you   need to cool them down quickly so put them  in a bath of cold water or even icy water.   So before we get started you are going to need a  vessel something to store your eggs in I'm going   to be using one of our large storage jars I'll  put a link down in the description section for   these wonderful jars that we have made right here  locally if you want something simple or something   you've got a mason jar will work great for this.  Next we're going to need 2 cups of malt vinegar   boiled you could use distilled vinegar or cider  vinegar but really I think malt vinegar is the   best for this recipe. To our heated vinegar  we're going to add some black peppercorns a few   blades of mace and some sweet herbs like thyme  and rosemary. So modern pickled eggs you find   today in the at the grocery store and the deli  or whatever are usually magenta or very bright   red and that coloring is usually accomplished  with beet juice but all the English recipes   that we usually find the pickled eggs from in  the 18th century those are actually made red   with not beet juice but cochineal. Cochineal was  popular in the 18th century for dyeing food and   other things it is a Central American scale bug  that grows on cactus plants while it was popular   in the 18th century it's still popular today but  it goes by a different name they call it carmine   the cochineal is very easy to use I took about  a teaspoon of it put it in my little mortar and   pestle and ground it up till it's a nice fine  powder and then put that into a little bit of   cloth and wrapped it up and this little bundle  I'll put into our mixture with the vinegar and   let it steep. Now it's as simple as loading up our  jar with our already boiled eggs now let's remove   the the little sachet that has the cochineal in  it it really it's steeped long enough to transfer   that dye into the vinegar solution and finally  we'll just pour this warm vinegar solution right   over the top of our eggs we want to make sure they  come all the way up to the top cover up the eggs   and we're going to stir the eggs just a little  bit she calls for this in the recipe so that   the dye covers the eggs completely and gets an  even coating. Now they're ready to store in the   refrigerator you should keep these for at least  10 days for them to complete their pickle but   they will stay good for months well here are our  pickled eggs and they look great you know in the   18th century these would have made a perfect  garnish regardless they would be spectacular   on the table there you go look at that we've got a  very nice sort of mahogany color through the whole   thing and the the yolk is colored and nice and  dark there they are they look spectacular let's   see what they taste like. Hmm wow much better  than I was expecting much more mild though with   a nice little pickley flavor to them so these  turned out fantastic they look great and they   taste great and they're really they're so simple  that you really need to try them and thanks for   watching. Ff you're new to our channel I want  to welcome you you can subscribe by clicking   the button right up here also check out our  related videos thanks so much for watching.

Channel: Townsends

Views: 1,886,040

Keywords: Egg (Food), Food, Pickling, History, 18th Century, Pickled Egg (Dish), Cooking, Jas Townsend and Son, Hard Boiled Eggs, Kitchen, Food Preservation, Recipe, 1777

Id: NojtlqEUE0A

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/murraay_]

Love this channel!

[u/DangerouslyUnstable]

The best way to hard boil eggs is most emphatically NOT to put them in cold water. You put them in the water when it's already boiling. Different stoves have different levels of heating and will take different amounts of time to heat water resulting in very different cook times, not to mention the fact that a slow heat will cause the eggs to stick the shells far worse than putting them into already hot water. The rest of the video is cool though.

-edit- Read this if you doubt me about the hot start

[u/oatscoop]

I made these, and was curious as to why I too had the dark reddish brown color as seen in the video -- carmine is supposed to be brilliant red. So I did some research on Cochineal.

According to Wikipedia's article on Cochineal, you need to mix it with "aluminium or calcium salts" to make the bright red carmine dye.

Luckily I had some "aluminium salts" in the pantry in the form of "Alum" I'd bought for pickling. A tiny pinch of alum turned the dark reddish brown pickling brine a brilliant red, which the eggs soaked right up.

[u/okiecanner]

Here's the book he mentions pg 277

https://books.google.com/books?id=14IEAAAAYAAJ&pg=277#v=onepage&q&f=false

I like this guy, too. His videos are fun.

I always pressure cook my eggs before pickling. The shells fall right off. :)

[u/gillyyak]

The carmine is a cool color, but I still prefer the red of beets. Dark colored radishes give a nice color, too.

[u/scales82]

waiting for the "ARGHH ITS NOT PRESSURE COOKED"