Buttered Eggs

 Another unique Irish culinary invention is buttered eggs, a tasty way to preserve eggs and one will be offering at our farmers markets.

Invented in time immemorial, probably due to the proliferation of butter in Celtic culture, the Irish developed this way to preserve eggs. It became so popular that exportation of buttered eggs to England numbered in the tens of thousands of dozens every year during the English colonial times.

Because there is so much missing from Continental Celtic culture history there’s no reason to not believe that the continental Celts practiced this as well. Butter was a form of currency with them from Spain and Gaul to Galatia in modern day turkey

Because the shell is porous, it absorbs the butter to form a more protective seal. Today buttered eggs are a delicacy, largely vanished from Irish farmyards and pantries. You can't butter eggs by machine, as it’s an intimate practice involving the hand. Everyone needs to be done by hand. Farmers' wives used to say it was a task most difficult to execute in winter, when the butter was harder, and their hands were colder. So perhaps in addition to the egg and the butter, what I taste is the memory of an Irish woman whose palm coaxed butter lovingly all the way around a fragile shell, hoping to preserve it for as long as she could.

That might seem counterintuitive. Why waste butter on the outside of an egg? But clever Irish farmers had hit on buttering eggs as a way to preserve them during winters, when hens produce less. Taking freshly laid, still-warm eggs, farm families rolled them in their buttery palms. The butter helped solidify the hot, brittle shells, sealing off the yolky contents from the outside air.

Animal husbandry must take the forefront here because the eggs are never washed. These means super clean nests. 

Buttered eggs take on a shiny gleam. And, as an added bonus, the taste of butter permeates the egg, making it even richer when cracked opened and cooked. Eggs preserved this way keep for up to six months in a cool place and I have had them last even longer. It’s not surprising that buttered eggs were a Cork specialty, seeing as it’s also home to the Cork Butter Museum, a tribute to the region’s status as a butter-producing powerhouse.

They can be found at markets in Ireland, and I make them regularly as a homestead specialty. I will be releasing them at the markets to let you all get a taste of them too