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Kedgeree

A dish of cooked rice with fried onions, butter, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

Make the kedgeree

  1. Fry the onions in butter until brown.

  2. Move the saucepan with the cooked rice to the side of the fire to dry off moisture.

  3. Turn the Kedgeree onto a hot dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with the fried onions and hard-boiled eggs cut in halves.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying until brown adds sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying and adds richness and flavour to the rice.
Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the butter and seasonings.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein-rich texture and a mild, creamy contrast to the rice.

The step that matters

Drying the rice over the side of the fire. Moving the rice off direct heat lets surface moisture evaporate, so the grains stay separate and fluffy rather than turning soggy when combined with the butter and onions.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, 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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