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Curried Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs rolled in a curry sauce served over rice balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs and rice

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then carefully remove the shells.

  2. Drop the eggs in hot water to keep warm until ready to use.

  3. Mold boiled rice into balls and place them in a plate warmer.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix cornstarch and curry powder with a little cold water or stock.

  2. Slowly stir in the milk and cook until smooth.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then strain it.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wipe the eggs dry, roll them in the sauce, and place them in the rice balls.

  2. Pour enough sauce over the rice to moisten it without discoloring the eggs.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Egg + ricetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, coated in the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the eggs.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced flavour and yellow colour to the sauce.
Boiled rice
Forms the base the eggs sit on, soaking up some of the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour enough sauce over the rice to moisten it without discoloring the eggs.. Cornstarch sauce thickens as it cools and curry powder stains, so the sauce must be spooned carefully to moisten the rice while keeping the eggs their natural white and clean-looking.

“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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