Another question about eating your chicken eggs - raw eggs

[ManueB]

They taste just fine, as does the cheese. Like I said earlier, I grew up in Europe, embedded in the local country practices and enjoying real, fresh food from our farm. But even there, even with people eating raw eggs, when it came to dairy, everybody knew that you boil the milk first before drinking it or making any cheese or yogurt with it. Even my old school grandma wouldn't even think of not boiling the milk first. So I have actually never had raw dairy of any kind, and can't weigh in on any taste comparisons. Grandma's yogurt and cheeses tasted amazing! I make them myself now with pasteurized store bought milk, and they taste just like I remember. What's lacking in the flavor in American grocery store dairy products can't be blamed on pasteurization. It's about technique, what's more practical on a large scale, and cultural preferences.

First, I apologize to the original poster and readers for the digression about cheese.
Now, i'm going to make an assumption from your name and I also apologize if I'm wrong, that your grandma came from a country in Eastern Europe, and that the kind of cheese she made was fresh cheese.
Pasteurized cheese can not curate like raw cheese for the very reason that it doesn't have the same bacterias. Here we have both mass produced pasteurized and raw cheese, and I can assure you that for cheeses that need to age like Comté or Camembert it makes a difference, even mass produced! I agree it doesn't really for fresh goat cheese, for example.
I would not comment on the taste of cheese or yogurt sold in the US : the last time I ate some was in 1993 and unlike your grandma's which left you a lovely memory, I don't remember at all what it tested like !

Since eggs don't age or curate and in fact test much better fresh, this isn't relevant to whether one should or could or not eat them raw. In my country people are much more afraid to catch salmonella in hospitals than in mayonnaise, but I guess it's easier to avoid mayonnaise than hospitalization.

 

[K0k0shka]

First, I apologize to the original poster and readers for the digression about cheese.
Now, i'm going to make an assumption from your name and I also apologize if I'm wrong, that your grandma came from a country in Eastern Europe, and that the kind of cheese she made was fresh cheese.
Pasteurized cheese can not curate like raw cheese for the very reason that it doesn't have the same bacterias. Here we have both mass produced pasteurized and raw cheese, and I can assure you that for cheeses that need to age like Comté or Camembert it makes a difference, even mass produced! I agree it doesn't really for fresh goat cheese, for example.
I would not comment on the taste of cheese or yogurt sold in the US : the last time I ate some was in 1993 and unlike your grandma's which left you a lovely memory, I don't remember at all what it tested like !

Since eggs don't age or curate and in fact test much better fresh, this isn't relevant to whether one should or could or not eat them raw. In my country people are much more afraid to catch salmonella in hospitals than in mayonnaise, but I guess it's easier to avoid mayonnaise than hospitalization.

She made both kinds. The debate is more ideological and cultural than anything... Some people feel very strongly about their cheeses/wines/whatever, and that feeling is not necessarily based on objective taste I once read about a double blind study where French people taste tested wine (or was it champagne?) made in whatever traditional region of France, and the same type grown and made in California. There was no clear preference, and a surprising number of people actually preferred the Californian one! There was a lot of outrage at the results, shock and embarrassment (and a good deal of denial), and now that study is one of those things we don't talk about as the feeling of superiority was seriously knocked back by hard science. So, I'm sure there are people who swear they can taste a significant difference between this and that, and there are some products that are markedly better or worse. But... There's also a lot of subjective perception as well.

 

[Rockergirl]

My mom ate raw eggs all the time when she was growing up in Europe, but not because anybody was pasteurizing/vaccinating (they still don't where she lives). She ate her family's chickens' eggs, and nobody had heard of salmonella back then. She says a popular treat among the kids was to poke a small hole in a raw egg's shell, put salt through it, then shake the egg for an egg "smoothie" because they didn't have candy or other treats back then. I grew up in Europe too and while I was too grossed out to try the egg "smoothie", I did lick the spoons/bowls or eat raw cookie dough when she was making sweets. We also didn't treat raw chicken meat like poison, and e.coli wasn't a thing. When I first came to the US a long time ago I was shocked to learn that people used different cutting boards for meats and non-meats, and washed everything so thoroughly, and it was such a big deal. Mass production changes everything, and contamination spreads to larger quantities even if the source is very small. It's just a different world. Also, people likely got sick and died from these things back in the day, too, it just wasn't necessarily linked to the proper cause. I miss licking the spoons, but as expensive as healthcare is in this country, I'm not risking anything.

Oh my....egg smoothie. Def not for me.....

 

[ManueB]

She made both kinds. The debate is more ideological and cultural than anything... Some people feel very strongly about their cheeses/wines/whatever, and that feeling is not necessarily based on objective taste I once read about a double blind study where French people taste tested wine (or was it champagne?) made in whatever traditional region of France, and the same type grown and made in California. There was no clear preference, and a surprising number of people actually preferred the Californian one! There was a lot of outrage at the results, shock and embarrassment (and a good deal of denial), and now that study is one of those things we don't talk about as the feeling of superiority was seriously knocked back by hard science. So, I'm sure there are people who swear they can taste a significant difference between this and that, and there are some products that are markedly better or worse. But... There's also a lot of subjective perception as well.

Well, for the specific case of the french being very proud of their raw cheese, it's funny to claim it's a cultural thing vs scientific, as pasteurization was invented by one of our only great scientist (aside Marie Curie but she belongs as much to Poland as to France ). And we are almost as proud of Pasteur as of our cheese. So I'm tempted to think we would have pasteurized the cheese before if it really had not changed the taste.
We heard a lot about that study on wine here too, and I'm quite ready to believe it. Now you make me want to try for fun to blind taste two pasteurized and raw cheese of the same kind and price range.

 

[raingarden]

I used to have a Russian roommate who would crack a raw egg into a glass of vodka and drink it down every morning as he walked out the door to go to work. He claimed it's a common practice in his country.

 

[K0k0shka]

And we are almost as proud of Pasteur as of our cheese. So I'm tempted to think we would have pasteurized the cheese before if it really had not changed the taste.

I wonder how much overlap there is between the cheese fans and the Pasteur fans... Looks like the latter are winning

Now you make me want to try for fun to blind taste two pasteurized and raw cheese of the same kind and price range.

Do let us know how it goes if you do!