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Curried Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs simmered in a curry sauce of onions, stock, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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. Slice the onions and fry them in butter.

  2. Add the curry powder and stock; stew until the onions are tender.

  3. Stir in the cream thickened with rice flour and simmer for a few minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in halves or slices and place them in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the eggs.

  3. Set the dish over boiling water until the eggs are hot, then serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Onions
Softened in butter, they form the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Cream
Thickened with rice flour, it gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main substance of the dish, absorbing the sauce's flavour as they are warmed.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with rice flour. Rice flour must be stirred into the cream so it thickens smoothly without lumps; simmering briefly lets the starch swell and set the sauce so it coats the eggs rather than running off.

Swap the onion

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

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

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