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Curried Eggs

A dish of hard‑boiled eggs served in curry sauce with rice and garnished with yolk, parsley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and place them in the hot curry sauce to heat through.

  2. Form the boiled rice into a border on a serving plate.

Serve

  1. Place the curried eggs in the center of the rice.

  2. Add a little lemon juice to the curry sauce and pour it around the rice.

  3. Garnish with sieved yolk and parsley.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Form the main body of the dish, providing firm, mild protein for the curry to coat.
Curry sauce
Provides the spiced flavor and warmth, and heats the eggs through as they sit in it.
Boiled rice
Forms a neutral base and border that sets off the eggs and sauce on the plate.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich curry sauce.

The step that matters

Adding lemon juice to the curry sauce. Acid is best added at the end, since prolonged heat can dull its fresh, bright flavor. Adding it at the final stage keeps the sauce tasting lively rather than flat.

“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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