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
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