Eggs and Egg Whites in Cocktails

Love it or hate it this controversial cocktail ingredient deserves to be in the spotlight, or at least given a fair trial before being written off completely. There are ingredients that contribute flavour, there are those that offer their strength and others who impart a particular feel to your drink. This week it is the latter I am most interested in. Today we’re talking egg whites.

Why are we so afraid of eggs and egg whites (in cocktails)?   One simple answer: foodborne illnesses, and more specifically salmonella.   Foodborne illnesses are nothing to ignore, it causes people to get sick and some pass away because of it. Annually four million, or one out of eight of us, are going to be caught by this type of infection according to the government of Canada.

Germs are all around us; it’s a fact of life. Our natural immune system has been built to fend off unwanted guests for as long as we have been around. We all occasionally succumb to the one that snuck through the gate, but generally speaking, my money will be on my immune system every time.

Please do not mistake me for being ignorant when it comes to my health.  There are a number of things we can do to prevent the spread of any disease. Washing our hands, using disinfectants and other cleaners around our common areas and preparing our meals with care. The key here is situational awareness.

In an age where new cleaning products are on the market every year, it is not surprising that we have lost touch with exactly how the fight on germs happens. Considering this is about egg whites I will specifically focus on salmonella. Germs of all kinds are living creatures just like us. They have conditions that are advantageous to their livelihood and conditions that are less than ideal. Just as a scorching 200 degrees C. summer day would not be survivable on the surface of the earth for us, they too have temperatures they cannot withstand. (Minimum safe internal cooking temperatures) There is also another way to make their living conditions impossible, chemical warfare, which brings into account the PH scale. Just as most seafood cannot survive in overly acidic waters, salmonella fails to survive when the PH is too extreme.

Does anyone remember when we used to mix our own cleaning agents? One of the most popular blends was a mixture of vinegar and water. Vinegar has a PH of 2.4, and that was typically heavily diluted for cleaning. Most base spirits range between 3.5 and 5 on the PH scale, making them effective disinfectants. Taking things full circle, our stomach’s PH, when empty, on average is at a 2. With this information, while nothing is a guarantee, raw egg in cocktails is not concerning to this connoisseur.

There is no doubt that the use of egg whites is controversial.   There are those among us who love the texture they offer to a drink, and there are those who would never even dream of consuming so much as a sip. The question here is a health safety one. I have nothing against anyone who chooses to avoid the product but for the reasons outlined above I personally will think nothing of adding a little bit of egg to my next drink.