Dunno, Thompson, but we North Americans are very firmly conditioned to keep eggs in the fridge for fear they will go bad while our backs are turned. I've been told that the washing commercially produced eggs are subjected to removes an important protective coating from the shells, but I really don't know whether or not that is hooey.

It is worth noting that, before the electric refrigerator, milk for domestic consumption came only in pint and quart bottles, and eggs were sold in twos, fours and sixes -- i.e., enough for one household for one day. As well as the convenience of weekly (rather than daily) grocery shopping, post-war advertisements for refrigerators stressed the "safety" and "modernity" of the all-electric kitchen, free also of the dreaded gas-fired cooker with a pilot light.

In the country village where my family lived during the 1950s, electricity was more than a little iffy. My mother used to complain about how the farmers would bring down the grid by all turning on their milking machines (also a brand-new thing) at the same time -- right when she was cooking supper. Refrigerators were small and inefficient, and freezers were so rare that Mr Daly the grocer rented lockers in his walk-in freezer. This practice was so important to the villagers that people who were heading out for groceries said they were "going to the Locker".