Scientists in Antarctica use an age-old trick to have fresh eggs year round

The south pole is the site of some of the most cutting edge and exciting science experiments and research projects.

It's also one of the most difficult places to live and work.

Winter sets in from March through September in Antarctica, and it gets so bitterly that cold that temperatures dip below the freezing point of gasoline (minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit), so supply planes can't fly in for more than eight months until the weather warms up.

That means no fresh foods for three-quarters of the year. That made writer Chris Ying from Lucky Peach wonder what Antarctican scientists eat for breakfast.

So he asked his friend, Chris Sheehy, an astrophysicist who works with the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica. Sheehy said eggs are by far the most popular choice. But how can you keep eggs fresh through eight months of winter?

It turns out scientists in Antarctica resurrected an old trick that makes it possible to keep eggs fresh year-round, Ying reports in the Winter 2015 issue of Lucky Peach.

"If you oil eggs with normal cooking oil, you can keep them at room temperature up to a year," Robert Schwarz, operator of the Keck Array telescope at the south pole, told Ying. The eggs are dipped into bowls of oil and fully slathered. They usually get a second coating half way through the winter. The oil creates a seal around the egg that stops evaporation and protects against outside contamination.

When the supply planes fly in with a few thousand eggs, all Antarcticans used to get together and have an egg-oiling party, Schwarz said.

One scientist named Keith kept a blog during his time in Antarctica in 2008 and described one of the egg oiling parties:

"About half the station crowded into the kitchen, poured themselves bowl after bowl of canola oil, and started dipping, rolling, and massaging eggs. There were the predictable casualties (beer, very oily hands, and thousands of eggs were never meant to go together), but within an hour we'd unpacked, oiled, and repacked more eggs than most people see in a lifetime."

And yes, there are pictures of said egg-oiling parties.

Schwarz said the practice was once quite common. Other methods included dipping them in lime water or coating them in wax.

"They used to do this on ships," Schwarz told Ying. "Officially it is not allowed anymore, because of stupid health reasons. But it's really nice to have 'fresh' eggs over the year."

Those "stupid health reasons" come from FDA regulations put in place to reduce the risk of Salmonella.

According to the FDA, eggs should be washed and refrigerated during processing, and you should use your eggs within three weeks of purchasing them.

But a study in 2011 found that coating eggs in oil preserved their internal quality, protected them from microbial contamination, and their shelf life was longer than unoiled eggs. The study only lasted 5 weeks, however - not a full year.

One blogger conducted her own year-long experiment to see if oil really could preserve eggs. A good way to test an egg to see if it's good or bad is to plop it in a glass of water. If it sinks, it's still good. If it floats, it's bad. After a year all of her oiled eggs sank - a sign that they were well preserved.

But according to the FDA, the only safe way to store eggs for a year if you beat the yolks and whites together and then freeze them.

It's unclear if the egg-oiling practice is still going on, but Antarcticans do have a safer alternative to preserve eggs year round, though we hope they like them scrambled.