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Curried Eggs or Shrimps

A curry made with eggs or shrimps, butter, shallot, curry powder, lemon juice, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Curried Eggs or Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs or cut the shrimps in half.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the chopped shallot until golden.

  3. Add the curry powder, lemon juice, stock, and cream to the pan.

  4. Stir in the chopped eggs or shrimps and heat through.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, holding their texture as they are gently heated in the sauce.
Shrimps
Add a seafood flavour and tender bite that contrasts with the soft egg.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the fat-soluble flavour of the curry powder when fried.
Shallot
Softens and turns golden when fried, adding a sweet, savoury base to the sauce.
Cream
Adds body and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the eggs or shrimps in the sauce. Once the chopped eggs or shrimps go in, prolonged or vigorous heating can make egg whites rubbery and shrimp tough. Heating just until warmed through keeps them tender.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, shrimp, butter, lemon, cream. 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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