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Curried Eggs

A savory dish of hard‑boiled eggs simmered in a curry‑flavored sauce with apples and onions.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Fry the sliced apple and onion until light brown.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour and curry powder with a little stock until smooth.

  4. Gradually add this mixture to the apple and onion, stirring constantly.

  5. Add the remaining stock and let the sauce cook for about 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and warm them in the sauce.

  2. Serve hot, optionally 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the curry flavour and helps the apple and onion brown.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its spiced, aromatic flavour.
Apple
Adds mild sweetness that balances the curry spices.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish, warmed through in the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour mixture to the apple and onion. Adding the flour mixture all at once can leave lumps. Adding it gradually while stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

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