Water Glassed Eggs

by

Now that I’m living close to my mom, who is in her eighties, we have a lot of interesting discussions about the “good old days.” For instance, her grandfather, a Finnish immigrant, never farmed with a tractor. He used mules until he died in the 1940s. I’ve learned about pitching hay into the hay wagon while kids stamped it down, and tying the milk cow to the car bumper and pulling her to the neighbor’s field to put her in with the bull.

I’ve learned about her friends who had no running water and who bathed in the slough, my uncle tipping outhouses at Halloween, my grandmother putting water in the car radiator in the winter (no antifreeze) and then driving across the long lake bridge to go to a Roy Rogers movie, making certain to put a blanket over the hood of the car, to keep the radiator water from freezing. And of course when she got home, she had to empty the radiator. Good times.

My mother was fortunate enough to have a refrigerator while she was growing up, but her cousins had a hole dug in the back yard, covered with boards, where milk was kept.  Talk of food preservation led to stories of preserving eggs in water glass. This fascinated me, so I looked into it.

Water glass is a mixture of water and pickling lime. Pickling lime is a mixture of bones, oyster shells and limestone that has been heated in a kiln, then hydrated with water. There are different kinds of lime, and a person making water glass will want hydrated lime.

The first rule to preserving eggs in water glass is to use fresh farm eggs that have NOT been washed. when a hen lays an egg, she creates a product with a protective coating that seals the pores and keep bacteria out. This is called the bloom. Only eggs that have a bloom, which store eggs do not, can be preserved in water glass. If an egg is dirty, it can’t be wiped clean, because this affects the bloom. Only the cleanest eggs can be used.

Mix the lime with a ratio of one ounce of lime to one quart of water. You’ll need to mix enough to completely cover the eggs in your food storage grade container. A three-gallon pail with a lid works well. Submerge the eggs in the solution, pointy side down. After the eggs are submerged, cover the pail to decrease evaporation and store the water-glassed eggs in a cool dark place.

Before using the eggs, wash thoroughly, because pickling lime isn’t good for the digestive system.

How long can eggs be kept this way? From 18 months to 2 years.  You can keep adding eggs to the preserving pail daily, but the bottom eggs should be used first.

These eggs are not pickled. They are used just like fresh eggs. The only caveat is to watch for cracks and never use a cracked egg.

Are you familiar with water glassed eggs? Did your family use any old-timey food storage methods? Looking forward to hearing!

32 thoughts on “Water Glassed Eggs”

  1. This is the first time I have heard of this. Have you eaten eggs kept this way? Are they pickled or are they still used as you would fresh eggs? We keep our fresh eggs on the counter until we get too many, then put them into the fridge. We usually give most of them away before that becomes necessary. We have 6 chickens and 5 or 6 eggs a day add up pretty fast. It is a good thing I like eggs.
    I grew up in an old farmhouse (1865 or so). As with many old houses, insulation was often nonexistent. We lived across the street from an apple orchard and had all the apples we wanted. We lived on the Canadian-New York-Vermont border and had the perfect storage solution for bushels of apples. There was a large closet in our kitchen that backed onto a large, uninsulated area. In the winter, the closet stayed at about 40 degrees or so. Perfect cold storage temperature and a good substitute for a root cellar.
    I just might have to check into water glassed eggs. Thanks for an interesting post and giving me something else to think about and maybe try.

    • Th way your stored apples is exactly what I wish we had in my house, Patricia. I could have made a little cellar off the basement and didn’t, darn it. I’ve never eaten water glassed eggs, but they are not pickled. They taste fresh according my research.

  4. In Tennessee, my grandparents didn’t have indoor plumbing till ~1978. They got a modern kitchen then, too. Plus a two-room extension on the house, and a telephone. It did not have indoor heat other than one wood stove for the whole house. It was a special program Tennessee had for the retired elderly. I remember Aunt Bessie getting indoor plumbing and a modern kitchen after them. Aunt Bessie was born in the 1800s. Uncle Stacy was the oldest relative I ever knew. He died before their house was updated.

    I know my grandma used pickling lime to make lime pickles. Sour. Give me bread & butter or dill pickles any day over those lime pickles.

    While she had hens, I don’t remember her using water glass for storage. They did have electricity thanks to the TVA.

    My grandpa plowed with a horse or mule or just pushing a plow. My dad still has the plow. I remember helping plant potatoes. The seed potatoes were stored in the dugout cellar which was the “basement.” All the food was stored down there. Dirt floor. And a wringer washer.

    I do think my grandpa may have paid or traded for someone to use a tractor to plow in the later years. He mostly grew tobacco.

    There’s a set of really cool photos of my dad, grandpa, and Uncle Roy taken by O. Winston Link. They’re in a field harvesting corn. Horse and wagon. With the steam train in the background in the late 50s. O. Winston Link sent them a copy of the photos. Larger photos are in the museum in Roanoke, Virginia. And in a coffee table book of his photos. After I was told the whole story, I discovered the books and museum. It’s possible there’s also some photos in a museum in Abingdon, Virginia. It was closed when I was there. In fact, I identified my family in the photos for the Roanoke museum. They were just listed as farmers. OWL was commissioned to take photos of the steam trains as they were being taken out of service. It was one of the last steam train systems in the USA.

    I digressed a bit.

  5. I do some canning, mylar bags, 5 gallon buckets, water bricks, dehydration, packaging freeze-dried foods, and such, but honestly – water glassed eggs scare me a bit. I’ve eaten pickled eggs, but wasn’t a flavor fan of what I had. I think I’ll stick with the egg powder I have and thank my Father in Heaven for modern science in this matter. There are some amazing things I’ve learned from my wonderful grandmother and I’m also very grateful for wisdom passed down from times past.

  7. the house I grew up in was my Grandparents home – a huge basement (dug out in 1940) was utilized for food preservation and I remember going downstairs and getting pickles out of huge stoneware crocks – they were the best ever!

  8. Oh, my goodness, Jeannie. Leave it to you to share something so fascinating and unique, and in a way that’s easy to understand.

    I haven’t heard of this, either! Thank your mom for sharing her memories and giving us a glimpse into the past!! We are all learning from her today!

  9. I have never heard of this before. I do know that country eggs will last longer then store bought eggs. You can’t beat a good old country egg in the morning.

  11. I have heard of this but am too lazy to try it. Lol! We have around 70 chickens so extra eggs are always a thing, but we have many customers who buy them. It all works out and I don’t have to try to water glass just yet. Ha!

  12. I love this post, Jeannie! How wonderful that you got all of this information straight from your own sweet mother!! She is a treasure trove of information!

  15. I actually heard about this last week. And someone said they tried putting avacados in water in the fridge to make them last longer. Then someone else said that breeds bacteria. I guess the lime would take care of that problem with the eggs!

  16. I have heard of this but never seen it done.
    The house I grew up in, like many old houses in the Northeast, had a cellar with stone walls and dirt floor instead of a concrete basement. We stored carrots in baskets layered with dirt and/or leaves and had a bin for potatoes. There were shelves for canned goods too. We also had a small wood stove down there for those winters when the high of the day was below 0* for days in a row. In 1965 my mom went down to get something and found the rocks on one wall had fallen in. As awful as that was the result was finally getting new walls and a concrete floor the next summer and with that a furnace for central heat…..no more coal and wood stoves to keep the house warm. My mom did leave part of the basement walled off for a cold room. My husband’s family has always had a root cellar separate from the house.

  17. I have never heard of this method. We would can green beans, tomatoes, pickles and hot mix (variety of vegetables). When I was a child, we would stay where my Mom was born and raised in West Virginia. It had a wood stove and no running water. I would receive a bath in a metal tub. Thank you for sharing. God bless you.

  18. wow this is very interesting. I grew up on a farm, and our eggs would sometimes sit on the counter for days, but with a large family and three of them growing boys we ate a lot of eggs. And mom did a lot of cooking so the eggs never lasted long. But talk about fresh and tasty. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful information

Comments are closed.

Petticoats & Pistols