THE DRYING AGE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 47, 19 November 1907, Page 2

THE DRYING AGE.

HOW ECCS ARE DESICCATED. A NEW INDUSTRY. Wo live in a veritable age of dry tilings. Dried milk, dried fruit, and dried vegetables have been long with us. But dried eggs ara something new. The "Sydney Daily Telegraph" says that what promises to be a very successful industry has been initiated by , the Farmers' and Settlors' Co- . operative Society in the famous Sussex Street, Sydney, where a plant for the desiccation of eggs has been erected. The process is a purely Australian invention, having beon discovered and perfected by Mr. Horace Burrows, who was employed as chemist at the Broken liill Proprietary mine at the time the idea of treating eggs in this way first occurred to him. The company has had an experimental plant working for some months, and the ' results proved so satisfactory that the capacity has recently' been tripled. Briefly, the process consists of. reducing the eggs to a powder by a method of drying at the comparatively low temperaturo of 130 ■degrees, the result being that the eggs are not cooked, but remain in a raw state. The eggs undergo no chemical change, and only require the addition of water to reconstitute, whon they are undistinguishable - from a freshly-beaten egg. ■ Tliero is no chemical addition, but a preservative which is itself a food product is embodied. This in no way alfects the appearance or the flavour. The desiccated; eggs can be kept in ordinary packages in a dry place for any length of time and remain unaltered. The advantages are, therefore, apparent, especially for shipping business, and it looks very much as if this process is destined to satisfactorily solve the problem of the'export of eggs. This product has been critically tested by the Victorian Department of Agriculture, with success, and has been in constant use by leading pastrycooks in Sydney for months, with, it is said, eutire satisfaction. It seems i as if an extension of this system of dealing ' with eggs in seasons of plenty is likely to do i much for the producers by preventing gluts ' and low prices, and should largely supersede i all methods of preserving. 1