I made French silk pie with regular eggs (not pasteurized) is it safe?

Used organic eggs but didn't read the recipe before making the pie and didn't have time to buy pasteurized eggs. I did, however, heat up the chocolate before adding it to the egg mixture but I don't think it was hot enough to cook it well.

TDeu
  • Posted by: TDeu
  • November 1, 2014
  • 25210 views
  • 8 Comments

8 Comments

Sheri R.
Sheri R. December 14, 2019
I recently made a French silk pie and heated the eggs over a double boiler until it reached 160 degrees. The pie turned out excellent.
 
ChezHenry
ChezHenry November 2, 2014
No snark intended, just correcting an inaccurate post, where you argue thst it would take a lifetime of eating eggs to reach the one in 20,000 bad egg-thats flat out wrong, misleading and statistically incorrect.
The issues as I laid out were basic, and you shouldnt make these types of health and safety decisions on behalf of others. It is dangerous. When I cross the road I still look both ways, I dont close my eyes and hope i will cross and not be hit.
As for the arguments on food safety where persons state-they used to do it-and were fine, thats inaccurate also. Many persons did get sick, now they know why. Even 100 years ago they knew very little about these things. Many unsanitary practices have been removed from our behavior based on expanding knowledge, this is just one of them, others include washing your hands, just as one example.
 
nancy E.
nancy E. November 2, 2014
You will be fine. Fear mongers have forgotten that people have been eating raw eggs for hundreds of years. If they are organic and not intensively raised, you will be fine.I love that pie and make it with unpast. eggs.
 
sfmiller
sfmiller November 1, 2014
Personally, as long as the eggshells weren't cracked and I wasn't serving someone with immune-system issues, I'd eat it and serve it. The risk of salmonella from eggs is really very low. Something like one egg in 20,000 has salmonella. On average, it would take someone who used a dozen eggs a week eggs more than 20 years to encounter a single one.
 
ChezHenry
ChezHenry November 1, 2014
You are correct! Better odds than winning the lottery! But your math is way off, thats not the way statistics work. You dont need to eat a dozen eggs per week for 20 years. You just have to eat 1, the one in 20,000 that makes you deathly sick!
Dont roll the dice with these things. Just because you havent gotten sick from raw eggs, doesnt mean it wont happen in the future. My best advice is to always err on the side of safety, and brush up on Statistics 101 :).
 

Voted the Best Reply!

sfmiller
sfmiller November 2, 2014
Thanks for the advice, ChezHenry. Actually, I didn't need to take Statistics 101 to know that the next uncooked egg I eat could be the one in 20,000 with salmonella. That next raw oyster or piece of sashimi or medium rare burger, there's a very small chance it could land me in the hospital.

But then, so could my next trip in a car or walk down the street. Risk is an ever-present part of life, and reasonable people can disagree about the amount they feel comfortable in assuming. I happen to think that, in our increasingly germophobic culture, many people deny themselves pleasure because they're unreasonably afraid of risks whose likelihood is extremely remote. But that's my opinion; everyone makes their own call.

Anyway, as for me, I'm going to keep eating and serving runny-yolk eggs and encouraging my granddaughter to lick the brownie batter from the beaters (her mother, the nurse, does it too!). And if you don't want that piece of french silk pie, I'll take it. The snark? That you can keep for yourself.


As for me, if you don't want that piece of french silk pie, I'll take it.
 
drbabs
drbabs November 1, 2014
Like chezhenry, I frequently taste raw cake batter and cookie dough. The risk is probably low, but you don't want to be responsible for someone getting sick. I just made a dessert for my dad (whose 90th birthday is next week) that I got from his mother, and I re-worked it to get rid of the raw eggs just to be safe. I hate to tell you to throw away such a great dessert, and I'd probably eat it anyway, but if it's for someone else, throw it out.
 
ChezHenry
ChezHenry November 1, 2014
There is a slight risk for salmonella and other food born illnesses. I cant help licking the beaters after making a cake, and i am a lover of Steak Tartar, homemade mayonaisse, and raw egg eggnog. That being said, I do now buy pasteurized eggs for any raw egg foods I create. It is one thing taking personal risks, but food for me is always about sharing, nurturing, putting everything I know to task to create memorable meals for my family. Getting someone sick, particularly due to risky choices, is the antithesis of this. Some of these illnesses are downright nasty, having been poisoned at a restaurant once with a trip to the Emergency room has provided me with personal reason for serious pause.
As for your French Silk pie (awesome dessert btw), I wouldnt serve it, and chalk it up to experience-a small price to pay for a waste of fine ingredients. The odds are definitely in you favor that it will be perfectly fine, but these odds arent like the lottery-when you win, its disastrous.
One other note of caution here, whenever I make raw egg recipes, even with pasteurized eggs, I am extremely cautious with egg handling (the outer shells in contact with the internal egg is a real issue), I refrigerate and chill items immediately, and never ever keep these items as leftovers.
Safe eating!
 
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