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Curried Eggs

A curry sauce with butter, apple, onion, and eggs simmered together, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Curried Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the chopped onion without browning it.

  2. Add the curry powder and lemon juice, and fry gently for a minute.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute.

Simmer the curry

  1. Add the stock and chopped apple, stir until boiling, then simmer gently for 30 minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Warm half of the egg pieces in the curry mixture until hot.

  2. Pour the curry mixture onto a serving dish and arrange the remaining egg pieces around it.

  3. Serve with boiled rice on the side.

  4. Optionally, place the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 2-3 minutes to 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

Onion
Softened without browning, it builds a sweet, mild base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Blooms in the fat to release the spice aroma that defines the dish.
Flour
Cooked into the fat, it thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce and carries the flavour through the simmer.
Apple
Softens during simmering, adding body and a gentle sweetness that balances the spice.
Eggs
Add a firm, mild texture and body to the finished curry.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock into the flour mixture until boiling. Flour added to hot fat must be smoothed in before the liquid goes in; stirring while the stock heats keeps starch dispersed so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, flour, egg, lemon, 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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