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Sardine and Egg Curry

A curry of sardines and eggs flavored with curry powder, apple, onion, lemon, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sardine and Egg Curry

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fillet the sardines by cutting them down the back and removing the bones.

  2. Boil the eggs hard, then cut each into quarters or slices.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and fry the onions until golden brown.

  2. Add the curry powder and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped apple, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Mix well and add enough stock to create a thick sauce; simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the sardines and quartered eggs on a dish and pour the curry sauce over them.

  2. Serve with boiled rice.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Sardines
Provide the main protein and rich, oily flavour that the curry sauce coats.
Eggs
Add body and creamy richness to the dish as a second protein.
Onions
Caramelise when fried, building sweetness and a savoury base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the curry powder's aroma into the sauce.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the spice and savoury sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma and flavour of the sauce when briefly cooked in fat.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until golden brown. Onions cooked slowly in butter develop sweetness and depth through browning. Rushing this step leaves a raw, sharp onion flavour that carries into the whole sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, lemon, sauce, 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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