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Curried Eggs

A dish of sliced hard-boiled eggs simmered in a curry-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until light golden.

  2. Add curry powder and flour, then moisten with stock.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced hard boiled eggs and simmer for a few more minutes.

  2. Serve warm.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Onions
Softened and browned in butter, they build the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the eggs.
Stock
Provides the liquid that turns the flour and spices into a simmered sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Act as the main protein, absorbing the flavour of the simmered curry sauce.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the curry powder before the stock. Cooking the flour briefly with the fat and spices helps it dissolve evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps when the stock is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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