Pickled eggs
Pickled eggs are hard boiled eggs that are cured in vinegar or brine. Pickling is a method of preserving food by making it more acidic. By making the food sufficiently acidic bacteria will not grow. A ph below 4.6 is sufficient to stop the growth of most bacteria.
Curing is a method of preserving food by the addition of salt. Curing makes the food inhospitable to bacteria growth.
Pickled Egg Recipe
To make a good pickle, get one bushel of clean lamp lime, free from dirt and all foreign matter, four quarts of fine salt, and sixteen ten quart pails of pure water, hard or soft, and as free from vegetable matter as possible. Slake the lime with two or three pails of the water, and dissolve the salt in a pail of it; then add the salt and the balance of the water. Stir the preparation well; let it stand a short time, and stir it again three or four times. Finally, let it settle, and dip the clear pickle into the cistern or cask you are to preserve in, filling it about half full.
After this is done, dip the eggs into the pickle with a dipper or basket made for the purpose. When the cistern or cask is nearly full of eggs, and they are well covered with pickle, spread a cotton cloth over them, and spread on that a layer of two or three inches of the thick lime that is left after the clear pickle has been dipped off. Be sure that the eggs are well covered with pickle while they remain in it, and the lower the temperature of the pickle is kept the better the eggs will come out. The best arrangement for preserving is to build a vat or cistern below the cellar bottom, being careful to get it well made, tight, and from six to seven feet long, five feet wide, and four or five feet deep. Eggs pickled according to the recipe given have been know to keep well for two years.
Pickled Beet Eggs
Pickled beet eggs are eggs that have been cured in a brine of beet juice, vinegar, cloves, and other spices.