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CEufs a l'Indienne [Curried Eggs]

A dish of boiled eggs mixed with a curry sauce of onion, apple, butter, flour, curry powder, and stock, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

CEufs a l'Indienne [Curried Eggs]

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then shell them and place in cold water.

  2. Cut two eggs into four rounds, then each round into two; chop the remaining eggs small.

  3. Peel and finely chop the apple and onion.

Make the curry

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and fry the onion and apple until golden brown.

  2. Add the curry powder, flour, and a little salt; stir over heat for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually add the stock and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the chopped egg pieces and heat through.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry on a hot dish, garnished with sliced egg and a border of boiled 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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
Provide the protein body of the dish, with sliced and chopped pieces giving texture to the curry.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the curry powder and helps the onion and apple brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Onion
Softens and browns in the butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Apple
Adds sweetness and a mild acidity that balances the warm spice of the curry.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the onion and apple until golden brown. Browning builds deep, savoury flavour through caramelisation and the Maillard reaction. Pale or undercooked onion leaves the sauce tasting flat and raw.

Swap the apple

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

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

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