Thursday, June 7, 2012

Acid on the eggs?

When dying Eater eggs this year (yes, back at Easter time) I noticed that the instructions have changed since I was a kid (on both Paas and another brand).  Now there are three levels of color: for pale colors, drop the tablets in water, for classic colors, use lemon juice, and for ultra-bright colors, use white vinegar.
Growing up I remember using vinegar and water in every cup and I had never heard of using lemon juice.
Dianthus used the pure vinegar method this year.  I observed that the colors were much brighter than those I remembered from my youth (and I'll admit to dying eggs every year at least through college and actually much later, so these are not ancient memories), and they dyed the eggs much more quickly, but they actually had poor adherence if you left the egg in to soak for a while, and they did not blend well.
Has anyone else experienced this?  Does anyone know if it is a different formulation or just the switch to vinegar?
And what's up with lemon juice?  Do any of you use the commercial egg dyes with lemon juice?  Is it different?*  How?
In any case, Dianthus was pleased with the results, found all the eggs the next morning**, and ate most of them.
*Lemon juice and white vinegar have nearly the same pH, so this is bugging me.
** He was better at searching for eggs than he is at his new game, hide and seek, during which he will either tell me where to hide or all of the places I should look before I find him in the bed.

2 comments:

Chateau said...

Hmmm. Does every household have vinegar on hand these days? Is buying a lemon easier?

Sparkling Squirrel said...

Well, one needs to shop for the dying kit and the eggs, so it shouldn't be that much of a problem to pick up one additional ingredient, be it lemon juice or vinegar. It would take several lemons to have enough juice for each color.