Four Score and One Thousand Years Ago

At first glance, the Chinese "thousand-year-old egg" looks to be a rare archeological find from the Mesozoic Era.

The shell of a thousand-year-old egg has hardened into pale gray patina, and is flecked and studded with coffee-colored splatter stains. Perhaps it is my love for the thousand-year-old oeuf, but to me, the simple decorations on its calcified exterior rivals the ornate artwork on an enameled Faberge.

An elaborate process is involved in the making of a "thousand-year-old egg." Chicken or duck eggs must be packed in an alkalized pickling plaster of potent black tea leaves, earthen clay, coarse granules of salt, dry lime, and a harmonious blend of pine wood and charcoal ashes. The delicate eggs are cushioned by rice husks and straw, and entombed in an airtight container, where they remain, to age one thousand years, or until fully preserved, and ready to be served in a steaming rice porridge.

Through the preservation process, the egg white congeals into a custard form, and the clear, viscous gel transforms into a glassy, copper-colored jelly, as translucent as broken chards of obsidian, and as dark as steeped black tea.

Similiarly, through the aging procedure, the supple, marigold-yellow yolk metamorphosizes into a milky gray, velvet meringue, delicately colored with greenish overtones. The yolk of a thousand-year-old egg is said to closely emulate the whipped consistency of a ripened avocado or creamy marscapone cheese, and echos the flavors of a hard-boiled egg, but in a more concentrated package. The eggs emit a panoply of aromas, perhaps the piercing of which is the faint odor of ammonia.

Fortunately, the sheltered consumer can bypass the lengthy "preserving ordeal" and simply purchase the eggs from the local Asian supermarket, where the eggs arrive in industrial, machine-packed pallets and are themselves tightly insulated in diminutive plastic baggies within sterilized styrofoam containers.

You'll either adore it, or detest it, but either way, I hope I have piqued your interest on thousand-year-old eggs. Don't wait one thousand years to try them!