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Curried Eggs

A creamy curry sauce with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and brown the minced onion.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder until mixed and bubbling.

  3. Add the white stock and stir until thick and smooth.

Finish the eggs

  1. Mix in the cream and sliced eggs.

  2. Season with salt and cook until the eggs are heated through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, sliced and warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion and curry flavour and adds richness to the start of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the finished sauce.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its characteristic spiced aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the stock. Add the stock gradually while stirring so the flour-butter roux blends in without lumps. Cooking the flour briefly first removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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