Any single food containing totally the components essential to supply the requirements of the body is named a complete or typical food. Milk and eggs are often so named, because they sustain the young animals of their kind on a period of rapid growth. However, neither of these nutrients forms a perfect diet for the human adult. Both are highly nutritious, but incomplete.
Eggs contain from seventy-two to eighty-four per cent. of water, approximately twelve to fourteen per cent. of albuminoids. The yolk is quite rich in fat; the white deficient. They too contain mineral matter and extractives.
To maintain eggs it is only necessary to close the pores of the shells. This perhaps done by dipping them in melted paraffine, or packing them in salt, small ends down; or pack them in a keg and cover
them with brine; or pack them in a keg, little ends down and cover them with lime water; this not only protects them from the air, but acts as a germicide.
Eggs shouldn't be packed for winter use later than the middle of May or before than the 1st of April. Where large quantities of the yolks are employed, the whites may be evaporated and kept in glass bottles
or jars. Spread them out on a stoneware or granite plate and grant them to evaporate at the mouth of a cool oven. When the mixture is perfectly dry, put it away. This powder is capable of taking up the
same amount of water that has been evaporated from it, and could then be used the same as fresh whites.
Served with bread or rice, they form an pleasing meal and one that is nutritious and easily digested. The white of eggs, almost pure albumin, is nutritious, and, when cooked in water at 170 degrees
Fahrenheit, demands fewer time for complete digestion than a raw egg.
The white of a hard-boiled egg is tough and quite insoluble. The yolk, however, if the boiling has been done carefully for 20 minutes, is mealy and easily digested. Fried eggs, no matter what fat is used, are hard, tough and insoluble. The yolk of an egg cooks at a lower temperature than the white, and for this cause an egg should not be boiled unless the yolk alone is to be used.
To control the freshness of an egg without breaking it, hold your hand around the egg toward a bright light or the sun and look through it. If the yolk appears quite round and the white clear, it is fresh.
