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Kedgeree or Kidgeuee, an Indian Breakfast Dish

A rice and smoked fish dish with butter, cayenne pepper, salt, and eggs, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Kedgeree or Kidgeuee, an Indian Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice until tender and dry, then let it cool.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the cooled rice with the flaked smoked fish.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the butter, cayenne pepper, and salt, stirring constantly over medium heat until hot.

  2. Quickly mix in the beaten eggs, ensuring it does not boil.

  3. Serve immediately when the eggs are just set.

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Smoked fish + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives its body, absorbing the butter and seasoning.
Smoked fish
Provides the main savoury, smoky flavour and flakes through the rice.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel while carrying the seasoning through the rice.
Eggs
Set gently with the heat to bind the mixture and add creamy richness.

The step that matters

Mixing in the eggs. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat. If the mixture boils or stays on the heat too long, the eggs scramble into curds instead of staying creamy and evenly distributed through the rice.

“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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