Eggs and Cape Cod
Did you ever check the freshness date on the end of a carton of eggs? And then not buy that carton because it wasn’t “fresh” enough? Incidentally, the date the eggs are packed into the carton is shown as the numerical day of the year. And the date printed on the box (usually a month or more after the numerical number) is “the sell by date,” not “eat by” date. If you lived on Cape Cod in the 19th century you probably kept eggs far longer than you’d ever dare to do today. How was that possible?
Several Cape Cod egg “facts” give some insight into storing eggs for use. Captain Brightman of Westport (near Cape Cod), for instance, collected fresh eggs from the surrounding country, and took them to Providence market in his sloop; he calculated that by 1840 he had transported at least three million and a half eggs. Our own Yarmouth packet loaded 300 dozen fresh eggs for a trip to Boston in the 1840s. How did they keep them fresh?
Sailing vessels rounding the horn to California for the gold rush often carried some eggs in their hold. Prices in California for foodstuffs included forty four dollars a barrel for flour, sixteen dollars a bushel for potatoes, ten dollars a dozen for eggs. With the fastest trips being about 90 days, something had to be done to the eggs to make them last.
From the 1880s on, newspapers included information about shipping eggs by the Post Office. Since egg shortages were in the winter, eggs wouldn’t be harmed by high heat. The ads stopped when electricity became available, early in the 1900s.
How you stored the eggs determined how long they’d keep. The newspapers, while full of suggestions on how to store eggs, seldom agreed on the methods. Storage was important to Cape Codders as most households kept chickens. And chickens, bless their little hearts, didn’t like to lay eggs on cold and dark days - i.e. winter. Cape people knew that if they could store eggs when they were plentiful, they could sell them for higher prices in the winter.
One favorite method of preservation was water glass. Water glass is sodium silicate, readily available in 19th century stores. Mix this in a crock of water and store eggs in it in a cool place and they’d last for several months, so they said. You couldn’t use the crock for other things after you’d saved eggs. Things such as sauerkraut wouldn’t ferment; it just turned bad! Water glass went out of style when electric refrigeration kept eggs cool. You wonder if glauber salts (sodium sulfate decahydrate), one of the by-products of salt making in our salt works, were used instead of water glass (sodium silicate) by thrifty salt makers.
There is something to the fact that you needed to coat the shells to make them last. Egg shells have a “bloom” on them right after they’ve been laid, but this quickly wears off. Most Cape Codders knew that you could keep eggs in a couple of gallons of water by adding a pint of coarse salt and slaked lime. Ground up oyster shells work well as lime. If one egg cracked in the solution it ruined the others.
“Take a keg or pail, cover the bottom with half an inch of salt, and set your eggs close together, on the small end; sprinkle them over with salt so as to cover them entirely, and then put down another layer of eggs, and cover with salt, till your keg is full; cover it tight, and put it where they will not freeze, and they will keep fresh and good a year, or longer. The eggs must be new and fresh when put down. If you take eggs as soon as the hen has laid them, and smear the shells with lard or butter, they will keep as good as new-laid eggs for some time; but if you rub the shells with butter at any time, it will keep them good for months, and will prevent their being hatched." -New England Economical Housekeeper, Mrs. E.A. Howland, [1845]
The newspapers recommended that “eggs may be kept fresh for several weeks, by packing them, the small end downwards, in bran or chaff; keep them in a cool place.” Today, do you store your eggs small end down like Cape Codders did 150 years ago?
How did the Cape buyer know if the eggs were fresh? An 1839 newspaper article suggested: "To choose eggs - There is another very good rule, though a singular one, that is, having washed and wiped the eggs clean, touch the large end with your tongue, and if, by holding it there a second or two, it feels warm to your tongue, it is good, but if it feels cold, it is a certain sign it is not good.” Don’t try this in a supermarket!
There’s another old Cape Cod way to check freshness. Fill a bowl with cold water and place the egg in the bowl. If it sinks to the bottom and lays flat on its side, it is very fresh. If they're weeks old but still good to eat, they'll stand on one end at the bottom of the bowl. If they float to the surface, they're no longer fresh enough to eat.
Only once did a newspaper discuss cooking with preserved eggs. The Barnstable Patriot, September 4, 1883, cautioned people about using eggs which were shipped from Europe. “Using slaked lime closes the pores of the shell and preserves the eggs until winter when they are scarce. But, you can’t use them for boiling because they explode.”
Eggs were frequently a news item. “Mr. William King of Barnstable has the hen that has laid the banner egg of the season. It weighs half a pound, and measures eight and one fourth inches oneway around.” May 16, 1872 Chatham Monitor
Newspapers also had lots of other hints about eggs. Superstitious sailors believed that you had to break up the egg shells in small pieces; otherwise witches might ride in them to get back on the boat. To stop chickens from eating their eggs (1876 -inject one with cayenne pepper; 1877 - wring their necks and eat them) and stopping crows from pulling up newly planted corn (1864- put a little strychnine in eggs - crows are killed). In 1818, Orleans offered three cents a dozen for crows’ eggs to stop them. You wonder if the crow eggs were then eaten?
20th century Yarmouth boys saw a chance to make extra money by selling fresh eggs to fishing vessels. One told the author the best money was made when seagull eggs were sold to boats. A delicacy in Europe, seagull eggs are speckled, so they look a bit different. But, gathered fresh and immediately coated by the boys with sizing, used in ironing clothes, they kept well. Done through the 1950s, he said they never got any complaints from fishermen, and it was almost 100 per cent profit.
With all of this knowledge, are you going to keep your eggs longer than you do now? Looking on the internet today, you are told that coating fresh eggs in mineral oil will help them last up to nine months in the refrigerator. They do need to be coated within 24 hours of being laid and then stored in 75% humidity and at a temperature no higher than 55 degrees. Oh, and you can’t use them in baking because oiling affects the foaming property of the whites.
Cape humor really shows itself regarding eggs. The following was written on a dune shack in Provincetown. “Remember, a true friend will think of you as a good egg, even if you’re a little cracked.”
by Duncan Oliver
Photo at top: Fanny Valli tending her chickens in West Yarmouth, 1918.
