ABSTRACT
Hie hard cooking, peeling, and preservation of eggs at food-processing plants is a rapidly expanding egg merchandising process. To minimize the loss of quality in hard-cooked eggs by cracking during cooking, it is essential that only sound-shelled eggs be used. Hard-cooked egg producers have developed a two-point grading system for their finished products–No. 1 and salad grade eggs. W. C. Reinke and J. V. Spencer found that an albumen pH of 8.7 to 8.9 or higher resulted in easy-to-peel hard-cooked eggs. In measuring ease of peeling on peel ability two factors are involved: the time required to remove the shell and the appearance of the peeled hard-cooked egg. H. K. Fuller and P. A. Angus reported on the effects of cooking medium and pre-treatment of eggs on the peel ability of hard-cooked eggs. Cherian et al. observed that storage of eggs for 72 hours in air over a 10% NaOH solution greatly improved ease of peeling of hard-cooked eggs.
