PREPARATION OP FROZEN AND DRIED EGGS. 



41 



The liquid egg was collected in. agateware buckets holding 20 pounds. From these 

 it was transferred to the churns andthen drawn by a gate valve into the 30-pound 

 cans, which served as the final containers. 



It was the custom of the girls in this house to use rags of various sorts for wiping 

 fingers, cups, tables, and the floor indiscriminately. The utensils were washed in 

 hot water, but frequently the girls, in an excess of zeal, would wipe a comparatively 

 clean piece of apparatus on a wet bacteria-laden rag, thereby very largely undoing 

 the good done by washing. Fingers were constantly wet. 



The supply of incoming eggs in the shell was chilled before candling. Frequently 

 there was an interval of several days between the candling and the breaking of the 

 eggs. Even though the eggs were kept under refrigeration, it was found better to 

 break immediately after candling (see p. 40). 



The work of the candlerswas fair; but too many eggs that should have been stopped 

 in the candling room found their way to the breakers. This resulted, as it always 

 does, in lax grading and carelessness in changing apparatus after breaking a bad egg. 



The general principles of bacterial cleanliness to be striven for in the egg breaking 

 were discussed with the management, and it was decided to try several breaking 

 outfits and systems of operation, using the table of eight girls as a unit. From these 

 experiments there evolved a new breaking outfit. This consisted of metal racks 

 supported on a traylike base and having an adjustable knife, which could readily 

 be removed after a bad egg had been cracked on it. Glass sherbet cups received 

 the eggs. A mechanical separator of white and yolk, which could be attached to 

 the knife, was also devised. 

 Until this invention the 

 shell method of separating 

 had been used. 



The table was also modi- 

 fied in that four holes, 

 each about 5 inches in 

 diameter, were cut in a 

 row down the middle. Be- 

 low these were set the shell 

 cans and into them were 

 fitted galvanized-iron fun- 

 nels, that the shells might 

 be more accurately and 

 easily guided into the cans 

 below. 



Tissue paper was provided for drying fingers, and the rags were abolished. A little 

 steam sterilizer was also rigged up for experimental purposes only. 



When the girls had become somewhat accustomed to the new forms of apparatus, 

 some laboratory examinations were made of the output prepared under the old and 

 the new conditions. The comparative results are given in Table 20. 



Fig. 7. — Outfit used for egg breaking before remodeling. 



EXPERIMENTAL AND COMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 



A mixture of summer firsts and seconds when broken under the cleanly conditions 

 just described and when the apparatus and containers were steam sterilized gave the 

 results for white and yolk shown in Table 20, Part I, experiments Nos. 519 and 518. 

 The total number of bacteria is low and B. coli were not found in a 1 to 100 dilution. 

 A repetition of this test, using seconds only and the old type of breaking outfit, gave 

 equally as good results, as is shown in experiments Nos. 526 to 528, inclusive. 



Cracked eggs, which had been candled the day before, were also broken on the 

 new tray and with sterilized apparatus. The findings on these eggs are recorded in 

 experiments Nos. 520 to 525, inclusive. It will be observed that grading became 

 necessary in this experiment. From the two cases broken, the routine grading prac- 

 tice of this house yielded 1J pounds of a second-grade liquid egg, and between 2 and 

 3 pounds of tanners' egg. The latter included the drip which collected in the 

 breaking trays. The number of bacteria in white and yolk from these checked eggs 

 were not very numerous, though higher than in the sound eggs of similar grade, 

 The whole egg contained some that had soft yolks, and the second-grade whole egg 

 consisted almost exclusively of eggs of this variety, with some that were beginning 

 to sour. The very high bacterial content of the second-grade whole egg again indi- 

 cates that a study of grading was needed to supplement that of cleanliness. The bac- 

 teria in the tanners' egg Were reduced in number by the amount of drip which entered 

 it. The drip from clean trays and cups is very different, bacterially, from that col- 

 lecting on rough and unsterilized apparatus. 



