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Curried Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs simmered in a buttery curry sauce with apple and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the apple and onion until soft.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and flour, then add the stock and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Warm half of the egg pieces in the curry mixture.

  2. Arrange the remaining egg pieces in a circle on a serving dish.

  3. Pour the curry in the center of the eggs or serve with a border of rice.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the flavour of the curry sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, coating sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that forms the body of the curry sauce.
Onion
Softens and adds savoury sweetness as the flavour base.
Apple
Softens into the sauce, adding gentle sweetness that balances the curry spice.

The step that matters

Warm the eggs in the curry gently. Egg whites turn firm and rubbery when held at high heat for long. Keep the curry at a gentle heat once the egg pieces go in so they warm through while staying tender.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, onion. 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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