eggselent adventure or journey into barfness?

February 22, 2009 1:55 PM

I have nearly year old duck eggs. Are they safe to pickle?

While cleaning out my refrigerator I noticed that I had 6 duck eggs still left from winter. They are free range eggs and do NOT have a sulfur smell. The date on the cartons says 4/2008 so 1) are they still edible if well cooked; 2) can I salt these in the style of a century egg and not risk salmonella?

They have been refrigerated this whole time.

posted by jadepearl to food & drink (12 comments total)

According this site, no, you should not eat them.
posted by Argyle at 1:59 PM on February 22

With poultry eggs you do a float test (decomposition releases gas, which makes them buoyant), but I'm not sure if this works with duck eggs. We have free-range hens and I've never seen the eggs last longer than about 5 months.
posted by crapmatic at 2:17 PM on February 22

Put them in a bowl of water. If they float, they're rotten.

On preview: what crapmatic said.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:21 PM on February 22

This site says 6 weeks. But go ahead and eat them and tell us what happens.
posted by electroboy at 2:21 PM on February 22

Thanks all, they were floaters. So they now reside in my snowy compost pile.
posted by jadepearl at 2:28 PM on February 22

No. You shouldn't eat anything that's nearly a year old, especially meat/dairy/poultry items.
posted by sixcolors at 4:15 PM on February 22

You shouldn't eat anything that's nearly a year old,

There goes all my good parmesan and aged balsamic.
posted by Miko at 5:04 PM on February 22 [7 favorites]

There goes all my good parmesan and aged balsamic.

And I hope you don't have any wine or liquor in the house. Even my *cheddar* cheese is at least 2 years old. God, now I want to go home just to eat cheese.
posted by The Monkey at 5:40 PM on February 22 [2 favorites]

Okay confession time, I collect yogurt. I have been running a multi-YEARS long experiment with yogurt. The oldest eaten has been a 8 year old container of milk's halfway leap to immortality, yogurt.

Yes, non-fat, low-fat and cream on top yogurts have been tested. It went somewhat awry when my tenants were doing me a "favor" by cleaning out the collection and various Asian sauce experiments. Man, you can't get stuff like that back or find randomly. So here I am sitting on containers of yogurt hoping that yes, civilization lasts long enough for me to tap decades old dairy products.
posted by jadepearl at 6:13 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

And I hope you don't have any wine or liquor in the house. Even my *cheddar* cheese is at least 2 years old. God, now I want to go home just to eat cheese.

TWO? I have TEN year old WI cheddar in my fridge. I'm a collector, one might say.
posted by vanadium at 12:46 AM on February 23

I've just checked, and it's actually a 3 year old. I'd love to try a 10 year old cheese, I've had a 4 year old gouda a few times and it's just incredible stuff. (And incredibly different from the normal younger goudas.)
posted by The Monkey at 4:41 AM on February 23

8 year old WI cheddar is some of the most amazing cheese I've ever tasted. With cheddar it seems you really can taste a distinct difference with each year of age.
posted by Miko at 8:18 AM on February 23