I have a philosophy when it comes to food: if you want a happy belly, you need to try different things. Normally, I'd like to think I fit into the category of "the guy who'll eat anything," but I've also been known to lose that bravado from time to time. Usually, I discover my limits when forced out of my comfort zone, like I was recently with pickled eggs.
It all happened rather unexpectedly. About a week ago, I was asked if I had ever eaten a pickled egg. It's a weird and totally random question, right? The "obvious" answer for me was "no way, why would I do that?"
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| Moe The Bartender and his jar of pickled eggs. (The Simpsons) |
The mere suggestion of pickled eggs conjures up memories of Moe's Tavern from The Simpsons, and that dingy jar with its putrid brine. So, when a colleague explained that he used down these things, one after another on bar nights, you can imagine my gag reflex kicking in. The thought of all these strangers dunking their sweaty, dirty palms into a jar and fumbling around for a "treat" is hardly appetizing. Then again, could so many people be so wrong? The short answer is, well, yes; lots of people can be collectively wrong about something. Still, I wondered: there had to be something to this foul snack . . . right?
Long story short, after swearing I'd never eat a pickled egg under any circumstance, I found myself at a grocery store that night buying a jar Strub's Pickled Eggs. Ingredients on the label: eggs, water, white vinegar, glucose-fructose (my favourite), and/or sugar, salt, spices, and sodium benzoate (a preservative). I wasn't impressed with my first bite, my disappointment coming from the texture of the egg - it was tough. I almost didn't want to continue after bite number two, but I persevered for you, dear reader. Then, the more I ate, the more I liked. A week later, I'm wondering how I'll get by without them.
My problem with the Strub's brand, as I mentioned, is with the texture of the egg white; maybe this has something to do with the shelf-life of the product. If you like pickles and eggs - individually - it shouldn't surprise you to find this combo is somehow satisfying. Maybe I need to eat more in order to get a better idea of what's out there.
What I'm taking away from the experience, overall, is that I see some great potential for what pickled eggs could be, if done with some care and thought. If you're feeling brave, here's an opportunity to try making your own pickled eggs:
As you can see from this random Youtube video, there can be good deal of attention paid to what goes into the brine, which is what makes or breaks your final product. When I see this jar, I see the potential to add flavour (though I don't think I'm the first to draw that conclusion).
CHEW ON THIS!
All this talk begs the question: why would anyone pickle an egg in the first place? From what I've read, the answer seems obvious. When you have a bulk quantity of eggs and no refrigeration, you must turn to preserving methods if you want to keep the food for an extended length of time. That's the explanation provided in an article on a website called British Food: A History:
With today’s farming techniques it is hard to believe that eggs were a seasonal food just like fruit and vegetables: the cold winter temperatures were not conducive to incubating developing chicks, nor was there enough food during those lean times to produce eggs in the first place.
I'll buy that answer, but how did they end up as a food staple in bars and pubs? For that, here's some history for you from a website called Punch Drink:
Eggs used to be standard fare at classic drinking holes throughout the Western world; in fact, they were often the free snack of choice, which likely sounds like an old-timey relic to most. At least, it did to me—milk used to come in glass bottles delivered to your door—but alas, the world of drinking back then was rounded out by far heartier snacks.
There is some well-founded nutritional logic to the pairing of eggs and booze: cysteine, a key amino acid in helping the liver function, is present in eggs, which is why that bacon, egg and cheese does wonders for your hangover. In fact, we humans are intuitively smarter in terms of our food pairings than we are in other areas of our existence. But food historians like to gangbuster into our instincts and give them a date, time and reason, and in the case of eggs and drinking, we may have copped it from the French. The tradition of serving free hard-boiled eggs “was reputedly born of a surplus amount of eggs [in France] and a requirement that establishments serving liquor also serve food,” The New York Observer reported back in 2011.
The hard-boiled egg was also a staple ingredient in the saloon “free lunches” of the 1800s. “Most of the foods offered up at free-lunch counters were mainly an enticement to attract people and, hopefully, get them to order a second beer,” says Christine Sismondo, the author of America Walks Into A Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops. Those lunches were so popular that one Chicago saloon reportedly went through 45 dozen eggs per meal, according to Sismondo’s research.
I always like a side order of perspective to go with what I'm eating. Ultimately, it seems that health code regulations eventually brought on the demise of this bar delicacy, which might be a good thing. Still, I'm a believer now, my conversion brought on by a random conversation about a food I thought no one had any business eating. As for that "food comfort zone" I mentioned earlier, I think I've expanded that about as far as I'd like it to go (for now). Any suggestions?
For more reading on how wooden eggs became a thing, check out this article from the Observer website.
