Because eggs are spoiled by hard freezing, they must be kept at a
higher temperature than meat and butter. Temperatures of from 29
degrees to 30 degrees F. are used in cold storage of eggs. At such
temperatures the eggs, if kept in moist air, become moldy or musty.
To prevent this mustiness the air in a first class storage room is
kept moderately dry. This shrinks the eggs, though much more slowly
than would occur without storage.
The growth of bacteria in cold storage is practically prevented, but
if bacteria are in the eggs when stored they will lie dormant and
begin activity when the eggs are warmed up.
Of the cold storage egg as a whole we can say it is a wholesome food
product, though somewhat inferior in flavor and strength of white to
a fresh egg. The cold storage egg can be very nearly duplicated in
appearance and quality by allowing eggs to stand for a week or two
in a dry room. Cold storage eggs, when in case lots, can be told by
the candler because of the uniform shrinkage, the presence of mold
on cracked eggs and perhaps the occasional presence of certain kinds
of spot rots peculiar to storage stock, but the absolute detection
of a single cold storage egg, so far as the writer knows, is
impossible.
It may be further said that with the present prevailing custom of
holding eggs without storage facilities for the fall rise of price,
eggs placed in cold storage in April are frequently superior to the
current fall and early winter receipts. Cold storage eggs are
generally sold wholesale as cold storage goods, but are retailed as
"eggs." The fall eggs offered to the consumer cover every imaginable
variation in quality and the poorest ones sold may be a cold storage
product, or they may not be.
The Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of
Agriculture has recently announced the finding of certain crystals
in the yolks of cold storage eggs that are not present in the fresh
stock. This finding of a laboratory method of detecting cold storage
stock was at first taken to be a great discovery. Further
investigation, however, indicates that the crystal mentioned forms
as the egg ages and that the rate of formation varies with the
individual eggs and probably also with the temperature, so that
while crystals may indicate an aged egg, the discovery only means
that the microscopist in the laboratory can now do in a half hour
what any egg candler in his booth can do in ten seconds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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