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Curried Eggs

A curry sauce served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Finely shred the onions and fry in butter until browned.

  2. Add a little flour and stir continually.

  3. Gradually add ½ pint of stock at intervals.

  4. Let the mixture boil for five minutes.

  5. Mix 3 tablespoons of cream with ½ oz of curry powder and add to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully cut the hard-boiled eggs into slices or quarters and add them.

  2. Simmer slowly for five minutes and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Onions
Fried until browned, they build the savoury base and sweetness of the sauce.
Flour
Stirred into the butter and onions, it thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Curry powder
Blooms in the cream and sauce, supplying the spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Cream
Mixed with the curry powder, it adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices.
Hard-boiled eggs
Sliced or quartered into the sauce, they add protein-based body and a mild, creamy bite.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and stock. Flour must be stirred constantly into the fat and onions, then stock added gradually, so the starch cooks evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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