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Curried Eggs or Shrimps

A curry dish made with hard-boiled 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 across.

Make the 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
Form the main body of the dish and provide its soft, mild protein texture.
Shrimps
Serve as an alternative main protein, giving a firmer, slightly chewy bite.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the curry flavour through the pan.
Shallot
Frying until golden builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Cream
Adds body and smoothness, mellowing the curry sauce.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Eggs and shrimp are already cooked, so they only need gentle heat. Overheating makes egg whites rubbery and shrimp tough, and can split the cream-based sauce.

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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