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Kedgeree

A dish of rice, smoked fish, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, curry powder, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,762 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in salted water until tender, then drain.

  2. Flake the smoked fish and add it to the rice.

  3. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix them in.

Make the curry butter

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the curry powder, and stir for a minute.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the rice, fish, and eggs with the curry butter, mixing well.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the curry butter as it is mixed.
Smoked fish
Provides the main savoury flavour and flaky texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and soft, crumbly texture to the rice.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and adds richness and moisture.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, spiced aroma that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry powder into the butter. Blooming the spices briefly in hot fat releases their fat-soluble aroma compounds, so the flavour spreads evenly through the dish. Burning them turns the flavour bitter.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, smoked fish, haddock, 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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