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Curried Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs simmered in a curry‑spiced sauce thickened with wheatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter and fry the chopped onion and apple until brown.

  2. Add ½ pint of water and a little salt.

  3. Mix the curry powder and wheatmeal with a little cold water, then add to the stewpan to thicken the sauce.

  4. Let the sauce simmer for 10 minutes, then strain it through a sieve.

  5. Return the sauce to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Shell the eggs.

  2. Heat the eggs in the sauce.

  3. Serve very hot on a flat dish.

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

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

  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. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Egg + appletop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs are the main component, heated through in the finished sauce.
Onion
Frying until brown builds a savoury, slightly sweet base for the sauce.
Cooking apple
Softens into the sauce, adding sweetness and acidity that balance the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced flavour that defines the sauce.
Wheatmeal
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and apple, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Strain the sauce before adding the eggs. Straining removes the cooked onion and apple solids so the sauce is smooth. Thickening with flour needs a full simmer to cook out its raw taste and reach full viscosity before the eggs go in.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apple, 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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