September’s spinach scare and the new warnings on Salinas Valley, Calif., lettuce are reminders to home cooks to keep food safety in mind.

It’s an issue that I’ve been watching since I noted last spring that a few recipes, such as those calling for raw eggs, are outdated.

Specifically, I’ve found recipes for chocolate mousse, tiramisu, and other desserts that called for uncooked eggs. In a tiramisu recipe, the eggs were separated: First, the yolks were beaten with the sugar and then mascarpone and set aside; then, the whites were beaten until stiff and folded into the mascarpone mixture. The lovely looking dessert was never cooked.

As I began perusing recipes, I saw that many older cookbooks use uncooked eggs in dishes such as sabayon, mousse, and other desserts. And even some newer cookbooks — a few from 2005 and 2006, for example — also have a recipe or two using raw eggs. Often, these dishes are historic or old-world recipes.