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Eggs, Curried.

Hard‑boiled eggs served with curry sauce, rice, onions, apple, stock, curry paste, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and onion 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 ↓

Eggs, Curried.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Trim the ends of the egg halves so they can stand upright.

  3. Arrange the egg halves around a hot dish.

  4. Pour the curry sauce over the eggs.

  5. Fill the center with boiled rice prepared for curry.

Make the curry filling

  1. Fry chopped onions and grated apple.

  2. Moisten the fried mixture with stock.

  3. Add curry paste and lemon juice to the onion-apple mixture and keep it thick.

  4. Stir occasionally.

  5. Add quartered or sliced hard-boiled eggs to coat them with the curry mixture.

Serve

  1. Cover the dish.

  2. Let the eggs absorb the flavors before serving with rice or on toast.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  3. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the curry flavour when coated and covered.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet when fried, forming the base of the curry filling.
Grated apple
Melts into the fried onions, adding sweetness and body to the curry filling.
Curry sauce
Supplies most of the liquid and spiced flavour that coats the eggs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced curry mixture.

The step that matters

Keeping the onion-apple mixture thick. If the mixture is too wet it will thin the sauce and make the eggs slide off or dilute the flavour. Stirring occasionally keeps the fried onions and apple from sticking and scorching while the liquid reduces to a coating consistency.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, rice, onion, lemon. 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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