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The following text is from the FDA site:

What is Salmonella? Salmonella, the name of a group of bacteria, is a common cause of food poisoning in the United States. Most people infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, abdominal cramps, and vomiting 12 to 72 hours after infection. Symptoms usually last 4 to 7 days and most people get better without treatment. However, in some people, the diarrhea may be so severe that they need to be hospitalized. In these patients, the Salmonella infection may spread from the intestines to the blood stream, and then to other body sites and can cause death unless the person is treated quickly with antibiotics. Certain people are at greater risk for severe illness and include children, older adults, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems (such as transplant patients and individuals with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and diabetes).

Salmonella do really exists sometimes in raw eggs. And lots of chefs, use raw egg whites to make mousse au chocolat, and some chefs uses raw egg yolks to in the mousse or other pastries, where they just beat it with some sugar and add it.

How chefs re-insure that the eggs are salmonella free ?

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2 Answers 2

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One alternative is to use pasteurized eggs.

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I trained in pastry in Canada and France, and very rarely saw/made a product that had raw eggs, in any form. Sugar acts to blanche eggs, but usually if you are to blanche yolks with sugar, they're whipped over a bain marie until they reach ~65C. You definitely pasteurize them. Even French meringue is only used if it is going to be baked, the preference is for italian meringue which you add sugar syrup at 117C to the whipping whites. As such, all my experience has led me to avoid using uncooked eggs. I have seen SO many examples of uncooked eggs from American cooks, recipes and cooking shows...it is always alarming to me.

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  • So the sugar syrup at 117C will totally pasteurize the egg whites ?
    – alim1990
    Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 7:13
  • And the granulated sugar whipped along with the whites cook it too ?
    – alim1990
    Commented Feb 13, 2018 at 7:14
  • Definitely! 117C is almost double the necessary temperature to safely serve eggs.
    – soup4life
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 16:55
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    Granulated sugar as a rule of thumb does 'cook' eggs, but I wouldn't say that it is enough to actually kill the bacteria. Always add heat to the eggs somehow!
    – soup4life
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 16:57

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