This is a dish that perhaps the best food taster would have some trouble swallowing.
The centenary egg or one hundred year egg is a traditional method of preserving eggs and is a specialty of Chinese cuisine.
Tradition requires that duck eggs (rarely chicken or quail eggs) are left for a period of about one hundred days in a mixture of water, salt, carbon, and calcium oxide. During this period the egg white turns into a gelatinous mass of amber color, semi-transparent, while the yolk takes on a dark green color.
After being shelled, one hundred year eggs can be eaten without further manipulation, as a dish in itself or as an accompaniment to other foods.
Those who have had the courage to try this typical Chinese dish have said:
“it stinks. It looks beautiful: the white is amber and has snowflakes imprinted on the surface. the yolk is moldy gray and soft and sticky in texture. The taste is that of a hard-boiled egg multiplied by four.”
In the end it looks more terrible than it tastes…
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