Liquid egg for catering kitchens

A café or hotel kitchen can get through a lot of eggs in one breakfast service. Some kitchens buy part of that egg ready cracked and pasteurised. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) sets out when pasteurised egg helps, in its catering advice for England, Northern Ireland and Wales, revised on 20 August 2026.

What pasteurised egg is for

The FSA says pasteurised egg products suit foods that will not be cooked, or will only be lightly cooked. Fresh mayonnaise, mousses, soufflés and eggs with runny yolks are the dishes it names for extra care.

"Using pasteurised egg products can help reduce food safety risks when preparing foods containing raw or lightly cooked egg."

When the FSA says to use it

The FSA asks caterers to think about who they are cooking for. It counts young children, pregnant people, older adults and people with an underlying health condition as more vulnerable to infection.

For raw or lightly cooked dishes served to those groups, the FSA says to use hen eggs from the British Lion Code or Laid in Britain schemes. If a kitchen cannot check that, the FSA says to cook the dish thoroughly or make it with pasteurised egg.

The FSA puts people who are severely immunocompromised in a separate group. For anyone on a medically supervised diet, such as after transplant surgery, it says to seek medical advice.

The forms it comes in

The FSA lists chilled liquid whole egg, egg white and egg yolk, as well as frozen and powdered egg products. It notes that commercial mayonnaise is often made with pasteurised egg.

Storage times and temperatures differ from one product to the next, so cooks follow the pack and the supplier's specification.

Pooled egg

Shell eggs cracked into a bowl for later use are what the FSA calls pooled egg. It says to keep pooled egg refrigerated and take out small amounts as needed. Kitchens should use it all on the same day and never top it up with new eggs.

Working out how much you need

In UK law, egg sizes are weight bands for the whole egg in its shell. Medium covers 53 g to just under 63 g. Large runs on from 63 g to just under 73 g. Each grade is a band, so two medium eggs on one tray can differ by almost 10 g.

The liquid in an egg weighs less than the whole egg in its shell. A kitchen can find its own number by cracking and weighing one tray of its usual eggs. That weight, divided by the number of eggs, shows how much liquid egg replaces each one.

Allergens and the wider market

Egg is one of the 14 allergens that the FSA says food businesses must tell customers about.

Defra's figures show UK egg processors made 19.4 thousand tonnes of egg products from April to June 2026. Liquid egg was 74.8% of that.

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