Name: Curry with Cream and Eggs or Shrimps
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons curry powder; 1 lemon, juiced; 2 cups stock; ½ cup cream; 2 eggs or 1 cup cooked shrimps; Salt to taste; Cooked cauliflower or spinach (for serving)

Why it works: Lemon and cauliflower work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Curry with Cream and Eggs or Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

Combine curry powder and lemon juice in a pan and fry gently for 3 minutes.
Add the stock and stir until it boils.
Let it simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.
Stir in the cream and eggs or shrimps, and heat together.

Serve

Season to taste and serve on a small hot dish or in china ramekin cases.
Serve with cooked cauliflower or spinach.

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.

Lemon + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + cauliflowertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,640 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Curry powder: Provides the main spiced flavour when gently fried with lemon juice.
Stock: Forms the liquid base that the curry simmers in.
Cream: Adds richness and a smoother, milder texture to the sauce.
Eggs: Thicken the sauce gently with heat and add body and richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and eggs or shrimps, and heat together.. Eggs set when heated, so the sauce should be kept at a gentle heat once they go in. Boiling can make eggs curdle and turn grainy. Shrimp only need warming through, so overheating toughens them.

Swap the cauliflower

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

Spinachfits better
Asparagusfits better
Leekfits better
Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cream, 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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Cauliflower Soup28 recipes

Cream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipes

Creamed Cauliflower17 recipes

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Curry with Cream and Eggs or Shrimps