Scope. This page provides a controlled reader-run protocol and does not claim site-run measurements. For cooking, cooling, storage and reheating, follow the current official guidance linked on the page.
What this page is, and what it is not
This page summarises what named food-safety authorities publish about raw and lightly cooked egg preparations. It is not our guidance. We have no standing to issue guidance on this subject, and a food publication that writes its own version of a national authority's position has done something worse than staying quiet.
What that means in practice. Where an authority publishes a position, we name the body, link to the current page, and record when we checked it. Where authorities differ, we show the difference rather than resolving it. Where the question is culinary rather than regulatory, which is a real and separate part of this subject, we answer it ourselves and say so.
We are not going to reassure you and we are not going to alarm you. Both are editorial positions dressed as information, and both are common in writing on this topic. The mayonnaise question in particular attracts confident answers from both directions, usually with nothing behind them. Our job here is signposting.
The preparations in scope are the familiar ones: mayonnaise and aioli, hollandaise and other warm egg emulsions, mousses, tiramisù and similar chilled desserts, meringue that is not baked through, homemade ice cream bases, some cocktails, cake batter and cookie dough eaten raw, and dressings built on a raw yolk.
What the named authorities publish, per jurisdiction
Guidance on raw eggs is not the same everywhere, and the differences are substantive rather than cosmetic. A reader in one country and a reader in another can both follow their own national guidance correctly and end up doing different things with the same bowl of eggs. That is not a failure of one of them. It reflects genuinely different egg production systems, different national control programmes, different histories, and different judgements about risk.
The current jurisdiction examples are summarised below with direct links. They are not merged into one global rule:
- United States: FDA egg-safety guidance says to use pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised egg products for recipes served raw or undercooked, keep eggs at 40°F (4°C) or below, and cook egg dishes to 160°F (71°C).
- United Kingdom: the Food Standards Agency's Salmonella risk profile of UK-produced hen shell eggs, executive summary (June 2023) records that a 2016 assessment by the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food found the risk from eggs produced under a recognised farm assurance scheme — the Lion Code or equivalent — to be “very low”, and that “this risk assessment led the FSA and FSS to update their consumer advice on the consumption of eggs in 2017, stating that vulnerable groups could consume raw or runny eggs produced within an assurance scheme.”
- Production and label context: USDA FSIS's shell-egg reference explains the US safe-handling label, grading, refrigeration and pasteurised options.
- Home pasteurisation: USDA FSIS says specialised equipment is not available for home use and that pasteurising shell eggs at home without cooking them is very difficult; this page therefore publishes no DIY pasteurisation schedule.
All four points were checked on 21 August 2026. Readers elsewhere should use their own national authority rather than importing either jurisdiction's rule.
We are aware that a reader arriving here wants a yes or a no, and that a list of jurisdictional positions is a frustrating thing to be handed. The alternative is a page that says something specific and unsourced about whether it is safe to feed a raw-egg dessert to a room full of people, which is precisely the kind of sentence this site exists not to write.
Where their guidance differs, and why
The differences fall along identifiable axes, and knowing the axes is useful in its own right, because it tells you what to look for in your own jurisdiction's guidance.
Whether the guidance is framed around the product or around the population. Some guidance is written as a statement about a food. Some is written as a statement about who should avoid it. Those read very differently even when the underlying risk assessment is similar, and readers frequently compare one country's product framing with another's population framing and conclude that the two disagree more than they do.
Whether a national control or assurance programme is treated as changing the advice. Where such programmes exist, guidance may distinguish between eggs produced within them and eggs produced outside them. That distinction is often the single most important thing on the page and it is often the first thing lost when the advice is repeated secondhand.
Refrigeration of shell eggs. Handling and storage practices for eggs before they reach the kitchen differ between countries, and the domestic storage advice that follows differs accordingly. This is one of the most visible differences to anyone who has cooked in more than one country, and it is downstream of the production system rather than a matter of opinion.
How pasteurised egg is positioned. In some guidance it is presented as the recommended route for particular preparations or particular groups; in others it is one option among several.
How much the guidance distinguishes between preparations. A warm emulsion held over heat, a chilled mousse, and a spoonful of raw batter are different situations, and guidance varies in how finely it separates them.
Our job is to lay those side by side with citations and let you read your own jurisdiction's position. We will not average them, pick the most permissive, pick the most cautious, or produce a house recommendation that splits the difference. Where they disagree, we publish the disagreement, which is the same rule we apply to every number on this site.
Who is commonly advised to avoid these preparations
Authorities publish specific advice for specific groups, typically including people who are pregnant, infants and young children, older adults, and people who are immunocompromised or have certain medical conditions.
For higher-risk groups, use the current words of the relevant authority. FDA identifies children, older adults, pregnant people and people with weakened immune systems as at greater risk of severe illness on its egg-safety page. The UK position differs for qualifying eggs; read the Food Standards Agency risk-profile summary rather than importing that exception to another market.
If you are in one of those groups, or you are cooking for someone who is, the source you want is the authority in your own jurisdiction, not this page and not the recipe you are following. That is not a disclaimer. It is the actual recommendation of this article.
Pasteurised options, and what they change in the recipe
This is the part of the subject that is genuinely ours, because it is a cooking question rather than a regulatory one. Pasteurised egg is widely available in shell and in liquid form, and the useful question for a cook is what changes when you use it.
The answer depends on what the egg was doing in the recipe. The specifics below describe functions rather than measured outcomes; this page makes no quantitative comparison. For safety, use the current official egg guidance linked above rather than extrapolating from texture.
Emulsions. In mayonnaise and aioli the yolk is an emulsifier, and pasteurised yolk generally still emulsifies. Reports of it being slower to take or slightly less stable are common enough to be worth testing rather than repeating; we give no measured comparison of stability or of how much oil each yolk will take; if you want one, make both versions side by side and record it. If a pasteurised-yolk mayonnaise is slower to come together, the usual fixes apply: add the oil more slowly at the start, and make sure everything is at the same temperature.
Foams. This is where the difference is most noticeable. Pasteurised white is widely described as harder to whip, taking longer to reach the same volume and sometimes not reaching it at all. That matters for mousses, for meringue and for anything whose structure is aerated white. Practical adjustments: allow more whipping time, make sure the bowl is scrupulously clean and free of fat, and consider an acid such as cream of tartar to stabilise the foam. We give no figures for whipping time or peak volume; whip the two whites side by side on your own equipment if you want them.
Custards and cooked bases. If the preparation is cooked to a target temperature anyway, as a crème anglaise or an ice cream base is, the pasteurised version changes little about the method. The setting behaviour of yolk under heat is a temperature question and is covered in our custard work; the same principles that govern the same eggs at eight temperatures apply here.
Flavour and colour. Some cooks report a difference, particularly in raw applications where nothing masks it. This page makes no claim about that difference because it supplies neither a controlled comparison nor a cited source.
The cooked route. For several of these preparations there is a version that involves cooking the egg component rather than replacing it: a cooked-base mousse, a meringue built over heat, a custard-based dessert instead of a raw one. Those are legitimate recipes in their own right rather than compromises, and for anyone who has been advised against raw egg they are usually the better answer, because they remove the question entirely rather than reducing it. The texture temperature for those methods is a cooking figure for your own probe and recipe, not a safety figure for us to invent; for egg dishes, FDA's cooking temperature is linked above.
A lower-risk alternative, stated plainly. If you are cooking for anyone in a group that guidance addresses, or you simply do not want to manage the question, use pasteurised egg or use a cooked-base version of the recipe. You give up a small amount of texture in the foam and, on current evidence, very little else.
Storage of finished preparations
A raw-egg preparation is perishable, and any storage duration must come from guidance for that preparation rather than intuition or a neighbouring food category.
- Refrigerator temperature and shell-egg handling (US): 40°F (4°C) or below; FDA egg-safety guidance.
- Cooked egg-dish leftovers (US): 3 to 4 days refrigerated; the same FDA page. This is not asserted as a validated duration for raw homemade mayonnaise, mousse or tiramisù.
- Raw preparations: no preparation-specific domestic duration was located on the FDA and USDA consumer pages reviewed. Make small batches, refrigerate immediately, and follow a validated recipe or local authority where it publishes a shorter rule; this page does not invent a duration.
- Warm holding: this domestic article gives no hollandaise holding schedule. Serve promptly or follow a validated food-service control plan.
- Acidity: this page does not treat taste, a splash of acid, or an unmeasured recipe pH as a safety control.
Two points that carry no figure. These preparations are refrigerated; there is no room-temperature, pantry or larder holding step for any of them on this site, and a mayonnaise left out through a long lunch has a different history from one that was not. And spoilage in a raw-egg preparation is not reliably detectable by smell, taste or appearance, so a sensory check is not a safety test. The general treatment of that principle is in how long things actually keep.
Home canning, shelf-stable preserving and any attempt to make one of these preparations keep without refrigeration are out of scope on this site entirely. The CDC directs home preservers to current tested USDA canning instructions; none of the preparations in this article is presented as shelf-stable.
In Plain English
What it means. This page reports what named authorities publish about raw-egg dishes. It does not adjudicate between them, and it does not add a recommendation of its own. Guidance genuinely differs between countries, for reasons rooted in how eggs are produced there, and you should read the guidance for where you live.
Who it helps. Anyone who has found only two kinds of answer on this topic, the airily dismissive and the fearful, neither with a source attached.
When to use it. Before you make a raw-egg dish for other people, particularly people whose circumstances you do not know.
What to do next. Find your own jurisdiction's guidance and read the actual text rather than a summary of it. If anyone eating is in a group that guidance addresses, use pasteurised egg or a cooked-base version, and expect to whip the whites for longer. Keep the finished dish refrigerated and do not decide its fate by smelling it.
Next step
Read the authorities' own pages linked above. They carry the positions, the named bodies and the jurisdictional differences in full, and they change; this page does not reconcile them into a single line. The temperature behaviour of egg itself is covered in the same eggs at eight temperatures, the storage question in general is in how long things actually keep, and the rest of this category sits under eggs and dairy.