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Egg Curry

A curry made with onions, butter, curry powder, broth, cream, arrow-root, and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Egg Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter.

  2. Add curry powder and stew in broth until onions are tender.

Finish and add eggs

  1. Mix in cream or milk and thicken with arrow-root or rice flour.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes, then add sliced hard boiled eggs.

  3. Heat thoroughly without boiling.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the curry powder flavour and helps the onions brown gently.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour of the dish.
Broth
Liquid that cooks the onions and forms the base of the sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Arrow-root or rice flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Once cream or milk is in the sauce, boiling can cause it to separate and turn grainy. Gentle heating keeps it smooth, and the starch thickener stays stable at a simmer while the eggs warm through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, rice, egg. 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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