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Comment by lloydde | Hacker News Reader

When my youngest child was a baby and I was binge watching tv while comforting her, I found myself watching a doomsday preppers show. There I learned by oiling eggs they could be stored months. http://www.offthegridnews.com/off-grid-foods/preserving-eggs... looks to have confirmed the reality tv show: "[eggs] will, however, eventually develop an off-flavor, and this off-flavor is especially pronounced in eggs stored at 34°F for more than four months".

Tonight I also came across "best way to preserve raw eggs is to store them in a solution of slaked lime (you can find it at a building supply store) and water, which, in his test, had a 100 percent success rate after eight months" http://modernfarmer.com/2016/08/bizarre-ways-keep-eggs-fresh...

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If you preserve the egg in lime, ash, and a few other ingredients for long enough, the egg turns into a "Century Egg" with an almost jello like look and consistency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

Tastes kinda gross though (but I might be biased)

I can't help but imagine the origins. Long ago, someone either found an egg or tried to preserve an egg this way. They opened it up and found ... that ... and ate it anyway. After not dying, a delicacy was born.

I imagine this is how a lot of previously unthinkable things that required aging were made. Cheese, wine, etc.

My favourite in that respect is a kind of mushroom that you can buy in Finland.

It's deadly poisonous. Unless you cook it thrice and discard the water each time.

I can't fathom the thought process that went into finding this out.

The delicacys of today are the desperate hungers last find of yesterday. Rat-embryos? Delicious, if everything else is eaten.

> Tastes kinda gross though (but I might be biased)

For context: according to Wikipedia the yolk contains hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide produces a distinct "rotten egg" smell, ammonia is basically what makes cat urine smell like cat urine.

I guess it might be an acquired taste and there are likely preparations that make the taste more palatable and mask the smell, but it's fair to say that it's not much of a bias to find century eggs repulsive if you're used to less pungent edibles.

The level of smell really varies a lot (as does the texture).

Weird that you mentioned it today. I just made one for the first time today after visiting the Chinese supermarket (I am not East Asian).

Century egg is definitely one of the weirdest smelling things I have ever eaten. It smells like H2S. Took me back to my chemistry lab sessions.

> It smells like H2S

I cant recall that much of my high school organic chemistry but I would think that H2S would be a degradation product of spoilt eggs

Scrolling to the end on mobile and checking out the other unique egg dishes referenced is something I can not unsee no matter how much I want to.

They are awesome with pickled ginger.

But have you ever had it in congee with salted fish or pork? Game changer!

Egg shells are amazingly robust. When I throw whole out-of-date eggs into the compost, they will still look exactly the same when I come to use the compost 2 years later. Everything else has turned to "soil", but there's a whole egg sitting there. Inside they look similar to the Chinese preserved "century egg" (although of course not produced in the same way, and I'm not going to try to eat one).

I wonder if you could just hard boil them, then coat them with something like paraffin.

You could cover them in glitter and acrylic then hide them for children.

... and then find them a month later after they turn into little stink bombs

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